It has been over 20 years since Canadian filmmaker John Fawcett brought us the surprisingly good coming-of-age teenage werewolf drama Ginger Snaps.
The film focuses on two death-obsessed teenage sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), who try to keep their sisterly relationship afloat after Ginger is attacked by a werewolf. A few days after the attack, Ginger’s body starts going through some lycanthropic changes, and Brigitte must race against time to find a cure to stop Ginger’s bloody killing spree.
You would think after films like An American Werewolf in London and The Howling dropped in 1981, it wouldn’t be so hard to create a great werewolf movie, but it is. The strong points that make a werewolf movie work are the writing, transformation, and werewolf effects. Many werewolf films fail in one or both categories, so we have some unmemorable flicks. Those two movies had legendary directors (John Landis, Joe Dante) and special effects artists (Rick Baker, Rob Bottin), so for other filmmakers to meet those standards was a tall order. But a director and writer specializing in lesser-known TV show episodes made it work, and we got a werewolf movie that ranks high on the list.
One thing that makes the writing in this movie still work is the relevancy of the time it was released. When Ginger Snaps was released, it was trendy to be an edgy goth. This was the 2000s version of The Craft but with werewolves. It also helps that the film was written by a woman (Karen Walton) and had tie-in themes of teenage girls transitioning into womanhood. A girl’s first period was used as a plot device instead of the butt of a joke. The writing also focuses more on the relationship between the sisters rather than just savage werewolf evisceration. There’s only so much mileage you can get from mindless gore.
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Karen Walton took ownership of the writing, even while feeling hesitant to take on the job due to how young women are sometimes portrayed in horror films. She, along with great performances from Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle, helped change the narrative.
Returning to the other significant factor in a werewolf film, John Fawcett refused to use CG effects. There is no argument that Fawcett made the right choice here. The director also took a swing on newcomer effects supervisor John Furniotis, and we got progressive, transformative makeup effects throughout the film, capping it off with a solid final transformation and werewolf animatronic. The excellent gore/slash effects carried the film even further.
Time has proven that creating a great werewolf movie is tough. There’s a reason why many of the top werewolf films are over two decades old. But Ginger Snaps surpasses the tests of time and continues to hold its own near the top of the rankings.
If you haven’t seen this one, do yourself a favor and apply the black lipstick, put on your vial of blood necklace, crank the Evanescence to 11, and submerse yourself in all its early 2000s gothic glory.
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