Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) Review

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004) Review 

In the lexicon of werewolf films, there really aren’t any good sequels. With maybe the exception of The Wolf Man, franchises like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London had extremely bad follow-ups, but Ginger Snaps 2 breaks the mould…sort of. 

It picks up where the first one left off, with Ginger dead and Brigitte infected with the werewolf virus. To fight off the inevitable transformation, she’s been injecting herself with monkshood (wolf’s bane) like a junkie, only she’s not a real junkie, but she kind of is? It’s complicated. She ODs and is brought to a rehab clinic, where of course no one believes she’s really a werewolf. She breaks out, along with a young girl named Ghost, but they are pursued by another werewolf, and Ghost has some dark secrets of her own. 

The first Ginger Snaps set a rather high benchmark, and this sequel doesn’t manage to achieve the same level of entertainment or quality, but it’s still a decent sequel, and a well-made Canadian horror flick. The main things that cut it down a few notches are the absence of Ginger, and thus that sisterly banter, as well as the reduction in clever humour and scares. It didn’t take the direction I expected, so it gets points for originality. I like the rehab center as a setting, and the conflict of Brigitte trying to keep her curse at bay in a place designed to free people of their addictions, but all the nurses and experts not realizing she really does need the monkshood and she isn’t a crazy addict. Ginger is still in the movie, though, appearing in Brigitte’s hallucinations, which is very similar to Jack appearing to David in An American Werewolf in London. 

Though it’s not as slyly funny as the first, there are still some very funny scenes. In a sharing group, Brigitte tells everyone what it’s like to be turning into a werewolf, and the nurse writes down “Lesbian?” on her notepad. There’s also a scene where Brigitte’s sexual hunger kicks into high gear and a seemingly innocent relaxation session turns into a lesson on pleasing oneself. It’s unexpected, original, and humorous all at once. 

Inevitably, though, many of the same beats are repeated, but the second and third acts really devolve into cliché werewolf horror, and the werewolf effects, though good, are shown quite minimally. The character of Ghost, too, is just not that remarkable for the most part, and the pairing of her and Brigitte made me miss the pairing of the sisters from before. The ending does manage to live up to the shock of the first, but again, isn’t quite as good. 

In the end, I would still recommend Ginger Snaps 2. Just don’t expect it to be as good as the original. It retains some of the same dark humour as before, but under a different writer and director, it feels somewhat detached in style and originality compared to the first.