Dir:John Fawcett. Cast: Emily Perkins, Katherine Isabelle, Kris Lemche, Mimi Rogers
Ginger Snaps doesn’t seem to know quite what it wants to be. Part black comedy, part serious horror film, it cheats the audience by never quite settling in to one genre or the other. Opening with a genuinely disturbing scene of a mother watching her child play in a sand pit, only to suddenly notice that the family dog has been ripped to shreds only feet away from her, we’re then treated to a montage of the Fitgerald sisters, the film’s main protagonists, faking their own deaths in varied and imaginative ways, which, though dark, is genuinely funny.
The film continues in such style, sometimes amusing, but then suddenly quite sickening. Peter Jackson seems to be a heavy influence, as it’s part Heavenly Creatures and part Braindead (though never attempting to reach that films extreme gross quota) but, bar the shockingly downbeat ending, it’s all too light to quite work.
The fatalistic relationship between the two sisters is intriguing, but never really explored as deeply as the one in Heavenly Creatures, as before we know it Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) is attacked by what Bridgette (Emily Perkins) guesses is a werewolf, and slowly begins to change, first sprouting hairs and then growing a small tail. Ginger gradually becomes more animalistic too, finding interest in sex for the first time, before growing out of control and feasting on the neighbours pet dog, and then her school mates. Bridgette turns to local drug dealer Sam (Kris Lemche) for help, and its not long before they devise a solution to the problem, but, of course, its never that simple, and sadly things don’t go to plan.
Both Perkins and Isabelle are great, capturing the angst of teenage life well, and Perkins is genuinely sweet as the confused younger sister desperately trying to cope with her sisters increasingly bewildering behaviour, but the real surprise is Mimi Rogers, turning in a great performance, which I didn’t think her capable of, as the sister’s mother, desperate to gain acceptance from her offbeat daughters. And everyone else is fine too, far better than the majority of horror film victims.
To be fair, Ginger Snaps is far better than the majority of Horror films released in the last decade, and refreshingly free of Scream-esque post irony, but It’s irritating because it promised to be such a good film, something the horror genre desperately needed, but only ended up being interesting yet flawed.
Alex Finch.
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