Ginger Snaps (2000) Review

Ginger Snaps (2000) Review

Ginger Snaps is a Canadian-produced horror film about werewolves, but it puts a new spin on that classic full moon transformation of man-into-beast. This time, it’s woman-turning-into-beast, and it’s easily one of the best werewolf films ever made. Also, the title might seem to suggest it’s about cookies, but no, it has nothing to do with them.

Ginger (Katherine Isabelle, from the Hannibal TV series) and her sister Bridgette (Emily Perkins, who you may remember as young Beverly in the 1990 IT miniseries) make a pact to one day kill themselves together, and the opening credits play over clever “fake deaths”, which the teenage sisters enact and photograph for fun. These girls are dark, sarcastic, and outcast from the student body, but one night, Ginger gets attacked by a werewolf and survives, then she begins to change (She snaps! Get it?), both in her behaviour and appearance. It’s up to Bridgette to step out of her comfort zone so she can save her sister from completing her horrific transformation.

Ginger Snaps has most of the typical werewolf clichés, and yet it’s anything but cliché in every other way. It’s a genius story of young women coming of age. Ginger and Bridgette make a big deal about their periods and not wanting to get them, and when Ginger gets bitten by the wolf, it correlates with her first period, and the changes that go with it. The changes starts out pretty minor. She starts hanging out with the cool kids, then starts wearing slutty clothes, then has sex with guys—guys who she used to be repulsed by—but then she gets out of control, when she starts eating raw flesh and exhibiting canine features. 

One of my favourite scenes is when Bridgette watches Ginger sleeping, and checks Ginger’s waistline. She pulls down her underpants a little, and discovers Ginger has a tail forming. It’s funny and surprising and a little creepy all at once. And that’s how this movie is. It’s never extremely scary, it has a sense of humour, but it isn’t a straight-up horror comedy like An American Werewolf in London. The tension builds extremely well, and it ends with a pretty thrilling and unexpected final sequence. 

The makeup effects are good, though the full-sized werewolf looks a little questionable in some shots. It’s not shown much until the end, like in American Werewolf, and speaking of which, this werewolf is similar to the one in that movie, being a four-legged hound from hell, but it’s also unlike any other werewolf because it’s practically bald, and has breasts. Yes, the werewolf has clearly visible female breasts, and no, it is not hot.

Ginger Snaps is a fun and thrilling werewolf film, with compelling characters, a fresh approach to its lycanthropic lore, and to top it all off, it takes place in October, ending on Halloween night, making it a perfect film to watch this time of year.