Friday Night Fluff: Ginger Snaps
It is a rare occasion that I watch a movie outside the horror genre. I’ve read Fangoria, stopped in at Bloody Disgusting and squealed in delight when I discovered that my digital cable package included free movies from Fearnet. I know the territory well. It isn’t lost on me that the genre has some glaring flaws- namely misogyny and racial stereotyping (or exclusion). But there are a lot of horror films that don’t suffer from that at all.
For those who avoid the horror genre for its depiction of women, I would suggest you check out Ginger Snaps, a female character driven werewolf movie released in 2000. It became one of the top grossing films in Canadian film history and launched two (not as good) sequels.
The main characters of the film are teenage sisters Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Bridgette (Emily Perkins), outsiders who have formed their own private world. Neighborhood dogs have been turning up slaughtered and, after an altercation with a female bully at school, the sisters decide to take a late night stroll to the bully’s house to stage a fake death for her dog. During their walk, they encounter a real dog corpse that is still warm. Ginger, who has just begun her first period, is then attacked by a creature, which- and this isn’t a spoiler- was a werewolf.
The film continues to follow Ginger’s transformation and Bridgette’s attempts to find a way to save her sister. The only secondary characters in the film that get considerable screen time are their female bully, a boy at school that likes (and later sleeps with) Ginger, a drug dealing gardener who hits the original werewolf with his van and the girls’ somewhat dopey mother (played by Mimi Rogers). All of the characters in the film are well written but the women make out better in this film. The boy at school is mostly just a potential love interest while the gardener is a sidekick for Bridgette once Ginger begins to prioritize her life around being bitey.
This trailer has some mild spoilers but nothing that should ruin your enjoyment of the film:
i love this film.