In 2000, out of the frigid Canadian suburbs, loped Ginger Snaps, an absolute belter of a werewolf movie that blended lycanthrope lore and the rigours of female puberty like never before. While the result was certainly of its time (moody faced emo vibes ahoy!), this collision of An American Werewolf In London and Heathers proved to be something of a minor masterpiece to me, nailing both the snarly flesh ripping and brooding teen angst with a bitter wit so acerbic, it could strip paint.
However, what with the horror genre being as they are and thoroughly unnecessary sequels being all the rage, 2004 gave us not one, but two follow ups that each continued the story in very different ways. The second – Ginger Snaps Back: The Begining – was conceptually the weirder thanks to it taking the form of a kind of reboot/prequel set in the early 19th century (as you do), but that’s not to say that the more standard sequel leanings of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed doesn’t also get weird as fuck.
Months after the events of Ginger Snaps, we find Bridget Fitzgerald seemingly in hiding as the lycanthropy that transformed her sister, Ginger, courses through her body. Trying to keep the transformation at bay with repeated shots of Monkshood and monitoring her progress by logging how long it takes for self-inflicted cuts to heal, she’s not only trying to find a cure by pouring through as many books as she can, but she’s trying to stay a couple of paws ahead of a male werewolf who has picked up her scent and wants to mate with her. If all this doesn’t sound like an impossibly grim existence, we also find that she’s being haunted by the vision of her sister who doesn’t seem to want to offer any help other than the kind of withering put downs that older, moody siblings seem to excell at.
Of course, even for a werewolf-in-waiting, things can always get worse and after surviving an attack by that horny male and going into toxic shock thanks to the Monkshood, Bridget wakes in an in-patient drug rehabilitation hospital and finds that she is not allowed to leave. Surrounded by other troubled girls, opportunistic orderlies and stern-but-caring clinic directors who think they know what they’re dealing with, Bridget now has to try and find a way to control her mounting lupine urges as her transformation gradually ramps up.
Helping a little is a relationship she builds with Ghost, a young girl who struggles with processing reality, who is living at the the hospital while her grandmother is being treated for serious burns all over her body. But as these two try to plot an escape from the hospital, Bridget seems to be in a race to see which werewolf will claim her first; the one outside that can’t wait to jump her transforming bones, or the one inside that’s soon going to take over with an uncontrollably urge for lust and blood?
So I think we can all agree that Ginger Snaps was one of those films that could have been better served if the Fitzgerald sisters had been left in their final moments as an infected Bridget cradled the dying, wolven body of her sister Ginger as the camera slowly pulled back and the title theme began to play. However, as vastly unnecessary sequels go, Ginger Snaps 2 (or should that technically be Bridget Snaps) is actually packed with some pretty nifty ideas and even though it’s still vastly inferior to the original, it continues the story in both logical and surprising ways. The first instance is focusing almost entirely on Emily Perkins’ sullen Bridget and the way her more sullen, analytical mindset deals with the issues of lycanthropy. While the unsuspecting and headstrong Ginger kind of let it overwhelm her as it supercharged her sexuality and her aggressive tendencies (at the cost of growing a tail), her younger sister fights it tooth and nail every step of the way and much like how the first film married up the effects of puberty with werewolfism (unsightly hair, body changes, antagonist behavior), the sequel tries to link the supernatural affliction with the kind of mental issues suffered mainly by dysfunctional teenagers. Thus we get drug use replaced with frenzied injections of Monkshood; self-harm replicated by Bridget cutting herself to monitor her transformation and slicing off the more wolf-like parts of her body and mental health issues being represented by taunting visions of her sister.
As a result, we get a lycanthrope version of Girl, Interrupted (Grrrrr, Interrupted anyone?) that sees Bridget have to negotiate a hospital full of similarly troubled young women as she struggles to reduce the hairiness of her own problems. It’s here that Brett Sullivan’s movie kind of drops the ball a little because even though it’s a wildly original approach to a werewolf film, there’s a feeling that more could have been made from the setting. While Bridget’s condition is rightfully at the forefront of the story, the majority of the other patients are strictly one-note affairs that riff on the usual stereotypes such as callous bullies, histrionic liars and male orderlies who manipulate the patients for sexual favours in return for drugs. I mean, even A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3 managed to give us a well defined string of troubled kids, but while Ginger Snaps 2 misses out on this opportunity, it makes up for it in the form of Tatiana Maslany’s unhinged Ghost. Anyone who has seen the future She-Hulk’s superlative work in multiple roles in Orphan Black knows that the actress has the goods, but it’s genuinely surprising to see that she was just as good in a Canadian, direct to DVD werewolf sequel that technically didn’t need to actually exist. Plus the character not only manages to give the sequel a feel all of its own, but it really does make you feel that the filmmakers were trying to help the film try and be its own animal which is further enhanced by some subtle changes in the werewolf design that makes it look more traditionally lupine rather than the feline look the previous film ran with.
However, while I give the sequel all the credit in the world for doing something different and approaching the material with such a down-beat tone (the ending is pretty damn nihilistic by anyone’s reckoning) the follow-up just can’t get the hang of the bitchy sense of humour that made the original so special. As a result, Ginger’s second snapping ends up being more depressing than anything else and while horror films that attempt to use the misery of disaffected teens as a metaphor shouldn’t exactly be a perky affair, you miss the antagonistic, rebellious streak that infused the werewolf genre with such sassy life four years earlier.
Undeniably original, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed can’t quite capitalise on its concept with the same ferocity as the first film thanks to the fact that it’s noticeably a more dour affair. And yet the two strong central performances and a really enticing change in location means that even though the sequel is unavoidably unnecessary, it still gets to bare its creative teeth like few werewolf movie do.
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