GINGER SNAPS TRILOGY (2000-2004)
Label: Via Vision Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: MA
Audio: Uncompressed English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
GINGER SNAPS (2000)
Duration: 108 Minutes
Director: John Fawcett
Cast: Mimi Rogers, Kris Lemche, Jesse Moss, Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins
Ginger Snaps (2000) follows the exploits of a pair of death-obsessed teenage sisters living in the suburbs of Bailey Downs. The spooky duo are outcasts from even the freak-set at their school - they're the darker, angstier versions of Lydia from Beetlejuice. Not having friends leaves them plenty of time to plan their suicide pact and stage elaborately morbid death scenes they document through Polaroid photography. The younger sister Bridgette (Emily Perkins, Juno) is the mousier one of the pair, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle, TV's Hannibal) is a bit more aggressive and confrontational. On the night that Ginger receives the "curse" - her muenstral cycle - she is attacked by a monstrous beast that attacks and drags her into the woods. Torn up and bleeding profusely she escape the creature when the local drug dealer (Kris Lemche, Final Destination 3) splatters it across the front of his minivan. The sisters flee the scene with Ginger torn up pretty bad and near death but when they arrive home the wounds have already begun to heal unnaturally fast. Afterward she begins to sprout hair in weird places (and not the usual kind either) and her personality changes, becoming even more aggressive. Almost overnight she is transformed and quickly becomes an object of lust while her cravings and desires spin wildly out of control. What she at first mistakes for sexual urges is actually a deep hunger for flesh. As Ginger deals with her period and newfound blood cravings her dutiful sister Bridget must stop out of her sister's shadow and stop her from acting on her murderous impulses while dealing with the newfound distance between them, and thier mother's annoying but kind-hearted interference.
The film adheres to some established tropes of the furry-kind, but also delivers it with a unique perspective of a menstruating young woman struggling to find her identity while going through a very odd supernatural change in not only her personality but her physical form, while her sister struggles to curb her sister's new murderous instincts, which only becomes more difficult as her transformation progresses. The cast is superb, I completely believed these two were sisters in the way they fought and fed off each other. Mimi Rogers, also well cast, as their well-meaning but disconnected mom struggles to understand her deeply weird daughters - she even encourages their morbid hobbies - but they don't make it easy and towards the end it's quite fun to see just how far mom would go to protect her misfit daughters. The father is in the picture but his presence is quite minimal and ineffectual - the focus here is on the women and their struggles and their bond.
As a character driven slice of horror this is prime stuff with a lot of nuance and some nice character development, however the special effects of the low-budget flick are a bit shaky. Ginger's subtle transformations are handled quite nicely as she grows a tail and her nails grow, canine teeth emerge, eer eyes change color and facial features are slightly altered and she develops multiple nipples along her abdomen. All that was nicely done but the final transformation are not the film's strength, I did not care for the hairless werewolf look, it was pretty rubbery looking, but this is not your standard issue werewolf flick and it manages to rise above it's shortcomings. The characters are what drive the story which is good as the shaved-cat sort of rubber suit was awful, plus we get some fun, squeamish body-horror moments peppered throughout though- this is after all a movie about transformation.
At times I was reminded of Heathers in that Ginger Snaps has it's own witty goth-infused high school vernacular - it sets a tone and atmosphere and carries it through consistently. We have some nice moments of gore and black humor sprinkled throughout with an abundance of blood, dead pets, and a dude with a werewolf STD pissing blood - because as it turns out lycanthropy is sexually transmitted and Ginger's out of control sexual urges prove problematic.
Special Features:
- Deleted Scenes (26 min).
- Cast Auditions and Rehearsals (19 min)
- Being John Fawcett – featurette (2 min)
- Making Of – featurette (5 min)
- Creation of the Beast – featurette (5 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (4 min)
- TV Spots (1 min)
GINGER SNAPS II: UNLEASHED (2003)
Duration: 94 Minutes
Director: Brett Sullivan
Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Eric Johnson, Janet Kidder, Pascale Hutton, Patricia Idlette, Tatiana Maslany
Post the events of the first film Brigitte (Perkins) flees the suburbs of Bailey Downs and lives a nomadic lifestyle, intravenously
shooting monkshood extract to delay the effects of her own lycanthropic condition. She's being stalking by a werewolf
looking to mate with her, and it's this werewolf that attacks a guy giving her a lift early on in the film. Afterward she is found unconscious in the street, when the cops see her needle works they assume she's a traditional drug user and send her to drug rehabilitation clinic run by Alice Seversen (Janet Kidder, Bride of Chucky). Locked away inside she has no monkshood to stop her transformation, and she begins sprouting hair and her ear begins to turn pointy like a wolf, plus she's gets rather horny and fantasizes about masterbation during a yoga session. While inside she has to contend with a scumbag orderly named Tyler (Eric Johnson, American Gods) who trades drugs for sex acts with the women at the facility, and the comics loving 14-year-old Miranda aka Ghost (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black), and a catty junkie named Bath-Ann (Pascale Hutton, Shred). Realizing
the werewolf that is stalking her is getting nearer she looks for an escape, and ends up teaming-up with Ghost who sneaks her out of the facilty with the pair then holing-up in her Grandma's vacant house, till the werewolf eventually catches up to them.
I had not revisited this film for at least a decade, and did not remember much about it, rewatxhing it now I think it does enough different to make it worth a watch, even though the first film stood perfectly fine on it's own. Katharine Isabelle is largely absent, having **spoiler alert** died in the previous film, but she shows up as her sister's "dark passenger" or sorts. The werewolves this time around look a bit different as well, they're much hairier and better designed IMO. On the downside the film is not quite as gory as the previous, but it's still a solid entry. Having not seen it in so long I was a bit shocked to realize that Ghost was played byTatiana Maslany, this was pretty much her first film role and she has since gone onto star in the fantastic Orphan Black TV series and Marvel's She-Hulk on Disney+, she's done quite well for herself and had star potential here as teenager Ghost, who harbors her own secrets. As I said before, I don't think the first film needed a sequel, it was nicely self-contained, but Perkins does fine work carrying the picture on her own, still the same jaded, negative goth girl, but harder edged yet more sympathetic as well.
The way it comes to an end didn't exactly thrill me but it also didn't ruin anything, a solid sequel, not great, but solid.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with director Brett Sullivan, executive producers John Fawcett & Noah Segal, and producer Paula Devonshire
- Behind the Scenes: Beast Is Built (1 min), Fun on Set (5 min), Locations (6 min), Special Make-Up (6 min), Stunts (4 min)
- Deleted Scenes: Alice Makes An Offer (2 min), Brigitte's Introduction (4 min), Plan to Action (2 min), Trapped/Carnivore (3 min)
- Screen Tests: Eric Johnson (4 min), Janet Kidder (2 min), Pascale Hutton (2 min), Patricia Idlette (2 min), Tatiana Maslany (3 min)
- Storyboards (4 Min)
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min)
GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING (2004)
Duration: 95 Minutes
Director: Grant Harvey
Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins
In the third film, a prequel set in 1815 Canada, we again have the Fitzgerald sisters, Ginger (Isabelle) and Brigitte (Perkins) lost in the Canadian wilderness after a boating accident killed their fur-trading parents. They come across a Cree native American village that looks like it's just been attacked. An old woman tells they they are cursed, that one will kill the other, which spooks them, so they move on. After Gingers steps in a beer trap they are found by a indigenous Cree hunter (Nathaniel Arcand, Pathfinder) who leads them to neatby Fort Bailey, home of the Northern Legion Trading Company. The fort seems to have been under attack by same creatures that attacked the Cree village, it's wooden gates marred by deep claw marks and blood. The werewolves have claimed many lives and sent most of the surviving inhabitant fleeing for their lives aside from a handful of hearty men. What is left is a skeletal crew consisting of fort leader James (JR Bourne, Thir13en Ghosts), the brimstone and fire Reverend Gilbert (Hugh Dillon, TV's The Killing), physician Murphy (Matthew Walker, The Crush) and a man name Wallace (Tom McCamus, TV's Orphan Black) as well as a few other stragglers. The sister's arrival is met with great suspicion, and upon arrival they are tested to see if they are werewolves. The test involves attaching a leach to sample their blood, if leeches ingest infected blood react violently and swell to abnormal size, sort of like the blood test in The Thing, which I thought was a cool touch.
With the Fort at high alert and under near nightly attack that the atmosphere is tense and distrustful, suspicion continues to follow the sisters. It's discovered that one of the fort men are hiding away an infected boy who bites Ginger and thus she begins to transform, feeding into the Cree curse that was foretold earlier in the film.
Why the film which is set in the 1800's still features characters by the same name played by the same actresses is not explained, and I don't care either, I was pleased to see Isabelle and Perkins properly teamed-up again, and despite an anachronistic line or two I just went with it. It's plenty bloody, the werewolves are the best they've looked in the trilogy, and I had a blast watching it.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with director Grant Harvey, writer Stephen Massicotte and editor Ken Filewych
- Deleted Scenes: Old Wives Tales (9 min), You Lie (2 min), Extended Burial Scene (2 min)
- Grant Harvey’s Video Diary (10 min)
- Wolf Boy – featurette (2 min)
- Blood Guts & Fire – featurette (9 min)
- Production Design Walk Through – featurette (5 min)
- Fun On Set – featurette (4 min)
- Costume Design – featurette (4 min)
-Photo Gallery (2 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min)
Audio/Video: All three films arrive on region-free Blu-ray from Via Vision Entertainment in 1080p HD framed in 1.78:1 widescreen, with each film getting it's own dedicated disc and set of extras. These don't look like fresh new scans and there's no verbiage about the sources, but there's a nice layer of fine film grain with strong color reproduction and shadow detail, a very nice HD upgrade from the standard-definition DVD versions, with the first film looking to me eyes to be the same scan as the Scream Factory Blu-ray Audio comes by way of uncompressed English language DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with optional English subtitles. Dialogie is delivered cleanly and free of issues and the scores are well-balnanced, I thought they sounded quite good.
The 3-disc release arrives in an oversized keepcase with a flipper tray holding the disc. We get a 2-sided non-reversible sleeve of artwork, housed inside a side-loading slipcase with the same artwork.
Here in the U.S. only the first film is available on Blu-ray, so this set, which is thankfully region-free, is a great way to get all three films in HD on disc. This does not carry-over the extras from Scream Factory's Collector's Edition Blu-ray, and there are no new Via Vision exclusive extras either, what we get are the archival extras from the previous Lionsgate DVDs, and they're pretty decent.
The Ginger Snaps trilogy is a bit uneven but is still one my favorite millennial horror franchises, I love the unique take on the werewolf lore mixed in with a demented coming-of-age story about two death-obsessed sisters, it's good stuff.
Screenshots from the Via Vision Entertainment Blu-ray:
Gingersnaps (2000)
GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING (2004)
