Damn, was there never a good cover or poster for this film, or something?
WEEK TWO - GROWING PAINS
October 8, part 1
A film not afraid to play with classic werewolf conventions, Ginger Snaps could have been successful based on that alone. Removing the werewolf from myth and placing it into the 21st century, where it's a sickness like any other with symptoms and cures, the film has a lot of fun coming up with ways of defying your expectations. But Ginger Snaps has a much better idea in its mind than just having one of the classic monsters wake up in today's world, as it filtered through the perspective of its main characters, two sisters who love each other so dearly that even a little lycanthropy-assisted turmoil can't make them forget how much they mean to each other.
Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle star as Brigitte and Ginger, two of the most morbidly-obsessed young women this side of Lyida Deetz. These are the kind of girls who, for fun, stage death photos and imagine which one would be the best way to go out, as they've sworn themselves to a suicide pact that might have been only half-joking. Even early on, the film effortlessly makes you believe that these two have 15 years of history with one another, as Perkins and Isabelle dive headfirst into the roles with great writing to help them out. As things take a turn for the unfortunate for Ginger, their relationship is put to the test. Unnatural changes coincide with ones far more natural to supercharge Ginger's hormones, and while hardly subtle about it, the movie does get a lot of mileage out of Ginger's onset of puberty, including one of the most disgusting and hilarious descriptions of menstruation that I know I've ever heard. Meanwhile, Brigitte immediately recognizes the danger that everyone is in, and does everything in her power to stop Ginger from herself. It's that kind of devotion, as rebuffed as it is by Ginger, struggling with what she is to become and what she is supposed to be, that really sets it apart from more traditional takes on the material. But if one convention of werewolf must remain, it is tragedy, and even without the looming threat of Ginger's transformation becoming permanent, the film offers up a painful, tender look at a sisterly relationship that was perhaps never meant to last, one way or the other, and that sense of melancholy is where the film's deepest strength lies.
Far less effective are, well, anything other than Brigitte and Ginger, including a somewhat tone-deaf attempt at broader humor in the role of the mother, played by Mimi Rogers, but the films spends more time with the sisters than it does not, meaning that such transgressions are easily forgettable. Subplots do drag the film's pacing a bit, but does little to dull the effectiveness of the core relationship. I could probably go on about stuff that should bring the film down, but I keep going back to what makes it work so well, which says a lot about how well it does it. If the film isn't an outright masterwork of the werewolf subgenre, it is one of its strongest entries, and it is certainly one of its most unique.
October 8, part 2
How does one make a sequel to film that ended so emotionally like Ginger Snaps? Story-wise, it's not hard, as there's plenty to spin into a new tale, but how does someone begin to tell another tale like it? It's impossible, for more reasons that the plainly obvious, to make a story just like Ginger Snaps, so the filmmakers decided to tell an entirely different one, one with plenty of ties to the original, but seeking out a far different, trickier approach that while it does not have the emotional payoff that the original has, manages to find its own surprising pleasures.
Emily Perkins returns as a more sullen, remote Brigitte, who has a lot on her mind, including the immediate concern that the werewolf antidote may in fact prolongs the inevitable, and circumstances place her in drug rehab, away from the one thing that's been preventing her from the same fate as her sister, Ginger (who does return, albeit in a different capacity; less effective than I was hoping, but Katherine Isabelle and Perkins still make a great team). At the clinic, she meets all sorts of new people; some, well-meaning; some, sleazy; but none quite as hard to get a handle on as Ghost (Tatiana Maslany). Her loopy, erratic behavior is equal parts off-putting and endearing, as Maslany takes a tricky part and makes it work, giving the film a fun, unpredictable element that never quite goes where you think it will. That unpredictability is what helps keep the film fresh, and it's pacing is surprisingly brisk as a result of it. However, as a result of the faster pacing, it has a bit of an issue of getting to the finish line a little too soon, and the last half hour of the film strains to justify the remaining runtime. And just like the original film, it offers up a large supporting cast that doesn't get a whole lot to do, but Brigitte and Ghost are no Brigitte and Ginger, and it sticks out just a little bit more that there's a lot of dead weight. If any aspect of the film is unquestionably bad, however, it's definitely the soundtrack, which often comes across as bad Akira Yamaoka outtakes.
The film is still a pleasant surprise, however: with most horror sequels content to being more of the same, the ballsy nature of the story of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed ensures that, much like its predecessor, it has little to compare to, and the strong performances of its leads do a lot to help fill in the rest of the foundation. Unnecessary, perhaps, but it certainly made the most out of it.
October 9 preview: We turn away from sisters to brothers.
Frailty finds two boys between a rock and a hard place: disobeying their father gets them punished, but obeying him may lead to far more troubling matters.
