Ginger Snaps

Posted by Vicki on 19.03.05

The scariest thing about the dark is the great unknown; the fact that anything could be out there and the awareness of your inability to act against an invisible enemy is ever present. This is why so many horror movies initially seem so promising as the inevitably young and pretty cast run around in seemingly perpetual twilight only to get picked off one by one despite their best efforts to survive.

Of course, at some point about half an hour in someone finds a light switch and the once terrifying unknown creature is revealed to be nothing more than a fat guy in an ill-fitting monster suit with scales and blatantly rubber tentacles.

As slight variant on this theme is those monsters who hide in humans suits until the lights go out and then reveal themselves to be either a CGI-produced glowing green blob or the fat guy in his (by now well-worn) suit. If someone was really feeling experimental in their film making techniques (also known as run out of funding), you end up with such films as 'Proteus', which uses a green filtered lens to chase people down semi-flooded passages in an oil rig whose external proportions conceal a vast maze of tunnels leading only to the fat man.

This stale formula was one reason that I fell hook, line and sinker for the now cult but then unknown werewolf teen horror 'Ginger Snaps'. Whilst limited exposure to good werewolf films had left me hesitant, 'Ginger Snaps' appeared to be free of Albert and Costello style antics and thus safe.

Ginger and her sister Bridget both possessed as sick sense of humour and an obsession with dying that unfolded from their staging of elaborate death scenes and culminated in the unexpected ending all accompanies by a well chosen soundtrack and surprisingly good werewolf representations. (Not that I've seen a werewolf fully transformed to date, just several very odd homeless people who claimed to be some sort of lycanthrope.)

Things went slightly array with a sequel, 'Ginger Snaps Unleashed', and a prequel, 'Ginger Snaps Back', being spawned: with the former being reminiscent of 'Freeway' and the latter being most curious indeed as it was in theory a period piece set in the 19th Century when Canada was still predominantly an untamed wilderness with outposts dotted across the main trade routes.

The werewolves are again as realistic as they can get as they stalk the remote outpost which contains the girls, a few solders, the enemy within and a priest ever much in need of burning. Such lines as "these people are fxcked" perhaps detracts marginally from the historical tone but it is a hell of a lot more fun than 'The Village' soon to be available on limited edition DVD extra in which M. Night Shyamalan explains how he spent $60 million on making a dull and twist free film.