Ginger Snaps
***1/2
Cinema Releases - June 29, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. 104
minutes. Directed by John Fawcett. Written by Karen Walton; from a story
by Fawcett and Walton. Starring Emily Perkins, Katherine Isabelle, Kris Lemche,
Jesse Moss.
Over-analytical horror theorists always seem to
find sexual metaphors in movies. They will point out how the creature in
"Alien" represents female anatomy, and how in slasher movies it's always
the sexually active who become victims, as if punished by Christian morality.
"Ginger Snaps", an extraordinarily sharp and witty horror picture
from Canada, makes subtle digs at this kind of conjecture, by having one
of its main characters turn into a werewolf at the same time as her first
period. "They don't call it the curse for nothing!" the poster
declares.
The film takes place in a small, boring town,
where Briggite (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) are very close
sisters who vowed as kids that they'd kill themselves before becoming like
the dull folks surrounding them. The beginning of the picture shows a gruesomely
amusing sequence in which the girls take graphic pictures of themselves in
poses of suicide for a school slide show.
Briggite is fifteen, Ginger sixteen -- but neither
girl has yet started menstruating. One night they are chased by a wild creature
who has been ripping up dogs around the neighbourhood; Ginger finds herself
bitten, and in the following days starts having her first period, exhibiting
even more of a temper than most girls going through that time of the month,
developing hair in more than the usual places, and growing
fangs.
The sisters panic, but quickly reject movie folklore
about how to cure a werewolf. Instead of silver bullets and the like, they
slowly, logically, determine that this is some kind of virus, and take
interesting steps to combat it. When a solution is found, well, things have
gotten more complicated and uncontrollable -- "Ginger Snaps" ends with a
somewhat conventional violent conclusion, but by the time it comes we've
been impressed enough by the film's ingenuity, detail and morbid humour to
let the showdown scenes pass.
I might have made the film sound a little like
the recent horror programmes on TV ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Angel",
et al), but it's smarter and much less flashy. Independent Canadian horror
films often have a certain indefinable flavour to them, and "Ginger Snaps"
kinda reminded me of the early work of David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan.
In this genre, there are few higher compliments.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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