Man, I'm just a sucker for a girl covered in fur...
“Ginger Snaps” was an excellent, if typical, werewolf movie, with the exception being that the protagonist is a teenage girl as opposed to a man. Ginger and her younger sister Brigitte are a couple of Goth sisters who have a penchant for the macabre. Ginger is the hot tomboy you knew would be a great lay in high school, but a lousy girlfriend. Brigitte is a chemistry nerd who is constantly getting her ass kicked by the cheerleader squad. We are given a startlingly realistic (to me, anyway) view of modern high school life, and the world of the “outcasts”.
“Ginger Snaps” was an excellent, if typical, werewolf movie, with the exception being that the protagonist is a teenage girl as opposed to a man. Ginger and her younger sister Brigitte are a couple of Goth sisters who have a penchant for the macabre. Ginger is the hot tomboy you knew would be a great lay in high school, but a lousy girlfriend. Brigitte is a chemistry nerd who is constantly getting her ass kicked by the cheerleader squad. We are given a startlingly realistic (to me, anyway) view of modern high school life, and the world of the “outcasts”.
Eventually Ginger is bitten by a werewolf & the rest of the movie is spent with her sister researching lycanthropy trying vainly to halt or retard the transformation, while Ginger begins to not only embrace it, but revel in it. Her heightened senses drive her insane, and she both has sex with and eats the boy she was dating in one shot. The ending is really great, and I don’t want to spoil it for you, so we’ll move on to the sequel, “Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed”. This movie is focused on Brigitte, although her sister does return for a few brief cameos as a ghost, constantly prodding her younger sister to give up & embrace the inevitability of her lycanthropy.
We start off several weeks after the first movie, where Ginger had transformed into a full werewolf, and was working on taking her younger sister Brigitte with her. Brigitte has the look of Keith Richards, sans a transfusion: She has the wolf curse as well, and is prolonging the transformation by shooting up with Monk’s Hood, also known as Wolfsbane. This has the same apparent effect as a tetanus shot, and she gives her best Kurt Cobain impression during the injections, without blowing her head off or releasing a platinum-selling grunge album. An overdose of Monkshood - the poison that is keeping her transformation at bay - leads to her being incarcerated in a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts where she is deprived of the only thing that will stop her from turning into a beast and killing everyone and everything in butt-sniffing range. Without the Monkshood her transformation is beginning to accelerate, and we get to see some pretty good “Ewww” scenes of Bridget filing her claws down and cutting off her tail.
The rehab clinic is a typical state-sponsored rape/suicide factory, where the girls are all angst-ridden sexually frustrated cat-mean bitches who hate everything. Among them is a small pre-pubescent girl named Ghost, who has a habit of sneaking through the ventilation system and spying on the residents. She is also the center of the same peer abuse that Brigitte was subjected to in the first movie. It’s particularly gratifying to see Brigitte step in like Clint Eastwood in one scene, and put the fear of Lon Chaney into some of the girls.
It’s easy to dismiss Ghost as a “filler” character in the beginning, but that’s the catch: there’s MUCH more going on in her noodle than she lets on, and we are given quick little glimpses of the actual monster of the movie, as well as the werewolf. She helps Brigitte escape the facility, and they flee to the house where Ghost once lived with her Grandmother. Events play out pretty quick from here, so you need to pay attention, especially when the warden of the rehab clinic tracks them down…with the words “today’s special” printed across her forehead.
The great thing about “Unleashed” is that we see a completely different Brigitte than the one in “Ginger Snaps”. She is no longer a nerd, and very sure of herself in the hope of not becoming a werewolf. The scenes with her sister’s ghost play out great, especially one where Ginger reminds her sister that nothing can stop the transformation.
Brigitte: “I can do it, Ginger. I can fight it. I’m stronger than you were”
Ginger: “Funny, that’s not how I remember the first fifteen years of your life!”
Brigitte: “Well, it’s how I remember the last fifteen seconds of YOURS!”
This is one of the coolest werewolf movies I have ever seen. “Ginger Snaps” had a couple of nice twists, and certainly a great flick, but not really outstanding as a horror movie. “Unleashed” was excellent, and if you are in the mood for some fur, this is the flick to rent. However, it might be a bit difficult to identify with the characters unless you see the first movie. So I would strongly recommend you spend a long evening getting to know Ginger and Brigitte in “Ginger Snaps” and “Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed”.
We start off several weeks after the first movie, where Ginger had transformed into a full werewolf, and was working on taking her younger sister Brigitte with her. Brigitte has the look of Keith Richards, sans a transfusion: She has the wolf curse as well, and is prolonging the transformation by shooting up with Monk’s Hood, also known as Wolfsbane. This has the same apparent effect as a tetanus shot, and she gives her best Kurt Cobain impression during the injections, without blowing her head off or releasing a platinum-selling grunge album. An overdose of Monkshood - the poison that is keeping her transformation at bay - leads to her being incarcerated in a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts where she is deprived of the only thing that will stop her from turning into a beast and killing everyone and everything in butt-sniffing range. Without the Monkshood her transformation is beginning to accelerate, and we get to see some pretty good “Ewww” scenes of Bridget filing her claws down and cutting off her tail.
The rehab clinic is a typical state-sponsored rape/suicide factory, where the girls are all angst-ridden sexually frustrated cat-mean bitches who hate everything. Among them is a small pre-pubescent girl named Ghost, who has a habit of sneaking through the ventilation system and spying on the residents. She is also the center of the same peer abuse that Brigitte was subjected to in the first movie. It’s particularly gratifying to see Brigitte step in like Clint Eastwood in one scene, and put the fear of Lon Chaney into some of the girls.
It’s easy to dismiss Ghost as a “filler” character in the beginning, but that’s the catch: there’s MUCH more going on in her noodle than she lets on, and we are given quick little glimpses of the actual monster of the movie, as well as the werewolf. She helps Brigitte escape the facility, and they flee to the house where Ghost once lived with her Grandmother. Events play out pretty quick from here, so you need to pay attention, especially when the warden of the rehab clinic tracks them down…with the words “today’s special” printed across her forehead.
The great thing about “Unleashed” is that we see a completely different Brigitte than the one in “Ginger Snaps”. She is no longer a nerd, and very sure of herself in the hope of not becoming a werewolf. The scenes with her sister’s ghost play out great, especially one where Ginger reminds her sister that nothing can stop the transformation.
Brigitte: “I can do it, Ginger. I can fight it. I’m stronger than you were”
Ginger: “Funny, that’s not how I remember the first fifteen years of your life!”
Brigitte: “Well, it’s how I remember the last fifteen seconds of YOURS!”
This is one of the coolest werewolf movies I have ever seen. “Ginger Snaps” had a couple of nice twists, and certainly a great flick, but not really outstanding as a horror movie. “Unleashed” was excellent, and if you are in the mood for some fur, this is the flick to rent. However, it might be a bit difficult to identify with the characters unless you see the first movie. So I would strongly recommend you spend a long evening getting to know Ginger and Brigitte in “Ginger Snaps” and “Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed”.
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