This Teen Werewolf Movie on Prime Broke New Ground in Body Horror (2024)

“Cult classic” and “indie darling” are elite and highly sought-after titles on the horror circuit. After bombing at the box office, Diablo Cody’s 2009 film, Jennifer’s Body, was later revisited and showered with love. Julia Ducournau’s 2016 debut, Raw, burst out of the gate being critically acclaimed. Both films focus on a toxic female relationship that grows darker with the introduction of unnatural elements. In Jennifer’s Body, the title star is forcibly turned into a demon. Needy, Jennifer's best friend, struggles to keep pace with the uneasy turn this causes in their relationship. In Raw, Justine is forced to break her life-long vegetarianism and descends into cannibalism. Alexia, her sister, struggles with the same compulsions. The films use Jennifer’s demonic possession and Justine’s cannibalism to filter a coming-of-age story through the lens of young, female protagonists. Jennifer’s Body and Raw now stand as icons within the horror genre. It is not uncommon for conversations broadly centered around women in horror, as victims or perpetrators, to include these movies. And yet, one film that laid a great deal of the foundation for both of them is often absent from the discussion.

Ginger Snaps is a Canadian release by the director John Fawcett from 2000. The film follows the death-obsessed Fitzgerland sisters — Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins). When Ginger is bitten and turned into a werewolf, she indulges her darker impulses and quickly spirals into madness. It ultimately falls to Brigitte, who knows her sister best, to either tame or kill the beast Ginger has become. Ginger Snaps utilizes Ginger’s lycanthropy to explore complex relationships and play with classic horror imagery so bloody as to make an audience queasy.

Ginger Snaps

R

Horror

Supernatural

Ginger Snaps is a Canadian Horror film directed by John Fawcett and starring Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle. The plot sees one of two sisters undergoing a transformation into a werewolf as the other attempts to find a cure.

Release Date

August 1, 2000

Director

John Fawcett

Cast

Emily Perkins , Katharine Isabelle , Kris Lemche , Mimi Rogers , Jesse Moss , Danielle Hampton

Runtime

108 minutes

Main Genre

Drama

Writers

Karen Walton , John Fawcett

Tagline

They don't call it the curse for nothing.

Website

http://www.gingersnapsthemovie.com/

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Codependency Is the Real Monster in 'Ginger Snaps'

Justine of Raw is a cannibal, Jennifer of Jennifer’s Body is turned into a demon, and Ginger of Ginger Snaps becomes a werewolf. All three — the cannibal, the demon, and the werewolf — are utilized as symbols for consumptive, female desire. Ginger is obsessed with her sister. In their first scene together, Ginger and Brigitte tell each other, "Out by 16 or dead in the scene, but together forever" — a dark mantra they often repeat. Ginger repeatedly pushes Brigitte to commit suicide, with the movie positing that the most complete way for Ginger to "devour" Brigitte is to dominate both her life and death. As Ginger’s transformation into a werewolf progresses, any sense of self-restraint wanes. Sam, the boy helping Brigitte learn about werewolves, is the primary target of Ginger’s rage. Sam threatens the toxic, closed-loop relationship between the Fitzgerald sisters. If Brigitte pays attention to Sam, Ginger is no longer Brigitte's sole companion. At the climax of the film, whether a possibly infected Brigitte will consume Sam is the litmus test to prove her devotion to Ginger.

On the surface, across the three films, it's Ginger, Jennifer, and Justine’s sister, Alexia who experience the coming-of-age plot. But when compounded with the codependent relationships all the girls are tangled up in, it's Brigitte, Needy, and Justine who complete their narrative arcs by “coming of age” at the end of their films. To properly grow up, each girl must reject the toxic nature of the central relationship dictating their life. Needy stabs Jennifer in Jennifer's Body, and Justine goes home without Alexia in Raw. In Ginger Snaps, Brigitte arrives at a conclusion that serves as a blend of the two. Unlike Needy and Jennifer, Ginger and Brigitte are sisters, adding a familial slant to the conflict. And, unlike Justine, Brigitte ultimately is going to have to kill Ginger to stop her. There is no moment of radical acceptance, only a severing.

Bloody Body Horror Makes the Visuals of 'Ginger Snaps' Pop

Jennifer’s Body and Raw share a common ancestor in Ginger Snaps, but each diverged, ultimately developing their own aesthetics. Jennifer's Body leans more into campy visuals, while Raw favors a more art-house style. Ginger Snaps relishes in classic body horror and unnerving special effects. Set behind the opening credits is an absurdist slideshow of various staged deaths of the Fitzgerald sisters. Pictures of the girls hanging or crumpled under lawnmowers are assembled for a class presentation. This establishes a casual treatment of violence and death, not only from the movie but from Ginger and Brigitte themselves. This blurring of real and imagined violence is played with throughout the rest of the film. After accidentally killing their classmate, the sisters pass off the crime scene as another staged death. Their exacerbated mother cries, "Girls, I told you. No more deaths in the house!" The Fitzgerald sisters have been play-acting violence for so long that, once it becomes a reality, they are the two best equipped to function within it. Ginger is a capable killer, not just because she now possesses supernatural abilities, but because she is most comfortable drenched in blood. Brigitte is the only person who can stop her because she is the only one who perfectly understands her.

Arguably the most iconic scene from Ginger Snaps and Jennifer’s Body alike — the hallway walk — has no gore at all. In both, Ginger and Jennifer strut down the school hallway. Ginger has been bitten, and Jennifer has become a demon. This change has generated an unnatural beauty and confidence. The horror of these scenes is the creeping sensation that morals no longer tether the girls. Without humanity, there is nothing to hold them back.

Ginger's Werewolf Design Is One of the Scariest

Ginger’s transformation is up there with some of the best werewolf FX work. Whereas Justine is entirely human and Jennifer experiences minimal change to her physical appearance, from the moment Ginger is bitten, her character design begins to alter until she is a fully transformed werewolf. The audience is given a front-row seat for her slow slide from a teenage girl into a snarling wolf.

Though the fully transformed wolf is daunting, the subtler aspects of the change, like her new fangs and thick nails, have a greater effect on the audience. In one scene, Ginger struggles to shave her leg hair, as the hair grows back faster than she can remove it. She keeps cutting her legs. The visual of Ginger holding a razor covered in white fur, her legs bloody beneath, draws doubly on the discomfort of puberty and the uncanniness of fur growing on a human girl.

Special focus is put on Ginger’s spine when she has sex with a boy. In one of the more memorable clips from the movie, bones practically jump out of Ginger’s skin as she leans over the boy. While not as overt as Ginger covered in blood after a kill or sprouting wolf fur all over, the visual of her spine lengthening under her skin is one of the eerier effects in the movie. Evil is hidden under this girl's skin, and it is scratching to get out.

Despite being the title character, Ginger is no hero. She terrorizes the narrative and her beloved sister. And yet, there is no sigh of relief from the audience when Brigitte finally stabs Ginger, killing her. Instead, there is a sense of sorrow — a wince. In horror, audiences will often empathize with the killer, often going so far as to root for them. But before Ginger Snaps, it was more common for an audience to side with a male killer, and usually only because the protagonists who added to the body count were dumb or unsympathetic. Jennifer’s Body and Raw looked to Ginger and Brigitte when building out their toxic twosomes. For all the horror Ginger, Jennifer, and Justine subject their loved ones and their viewers to, it's hard to feel pleased if or when they are taken down. Ginger was not the first female killer in the history of horror cinema. She is not the morally gray character Justine embodies, nor a familiar victim like Jennifer. She is Ginger Fitzgerald, obsessed with death and her sister. The intricacies of her character, while not the first of their kind, opened the door for Jennifer and Justine and any number of sharply drawn female horror antagonists who have appeared since.

Ginger Snaps is available to stream on Prime Video.

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