Written by Linda
March 01, 2009
Leave it to the twisted Canadians to breathe new life into the teen slasher movie. Sure, Ginger Snaps has a clever and ironic script, but it also takes its role as a horror movie seriously, giving the audience some thrills and chills as well as plenty of nervous laughter.
Brigette and Ginger are gothy teenagers in suburbia, staging fakes deaths, talking about suicide pacts, and, well, not really fitting in at school. But then on the day of her first period, Ginger gets attacked by a werewolf that happens to be ripping all the town's dogs to shreds. She slowly starts to morph into a sexually aggressive, and increasingly dangerous monster. And of course her sister is the only one who can stop her.
Ginger Snaps made me laugh out loud many times (menstruation jokes! it's about time!), and Mimi Rogers is a hilarious scene-stealer as the girls' clueless suburban mom. It manages to be a clever horror film without resorting to the smirking know-it-all irony of the Scream-genre flicks that we are satiated with.
I'm not sure why Ginger Snaps went from the film festival circuit straight to the video shelves, bypassing mainstream theaters entirely... but perhaps now it can get some of the exposure that it justly deserves. Horror fans should definitely check this one out.
