THE GINGER SNAPS TRILOGY (Second Sight Films Blu-ray Review)

 

THE GINGER SNAPS TRILOGY (2000-2004) 

Label: Second Sight Films

Region Code: B

Rating; 18 Cert.

Duration: 296 Minutes 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 

Directors: John Fawcett, Grant Harvey 

Canadian werewolf flicks The Ginger Snaps Trilogy arrives on region B Blu-ray from Second Sight Films in a gorgeous 3-disc Limited Edition Rigid Slipbox set loaded with hours of new and archival extras, plus a 112-Page Illustrated Booklet with new writing on the films, and a set of Six Collector Art Cards!

GINGER SNAPS (2000) 

Duration: 108 Minutes 10 Seconds

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.O Stereo and 5 1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles

Video:  1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)

Director: John Fawcett, Brett Sullivan, 

Cast: Mimi Rogers, Kris Lemche, Jesse Moss, Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins

Synopsis: The original film is set in the suburban Canadian town of Bailey Downs, where a series of dog killings piques the interest of a pair of outcast teens; sisters Brigitte (Emily Perkins, Supernatural) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle, Freddy v Jason) Fitzgerald. Then on the night of Ginger's first period, she is savagely attacked by a wild creature but even though her injuries miraculously heal, she’s left with a newfound desire to devour… Brigitte must find a way to save her sister from her werewolf ways and with only 28 days to do so, can she stop the creature her sister has become in its tracks, or will they both succumb to the animalistic instincts?

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 - sort of like darker, angstier versions of Lydia from Beetlejuice. Not having friends leaves them plenty of time to  plan their suicide pact "out by sixteen or dead in this scene but together forever", and staging elaborate 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 period -  she is attacked by a monstrous beast that drags her into the woods. Torn up and bleeding profusely she escapes the creature when 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 by the time that they arrive home the wounds have begun to heal unnaturally fast. Afterward Ginger begins to sprout hair in weird places (and not the usual kind either) and her personality starts to change, becoming even more aggressive almost overnight. The transformation also sparks a sexual awakening, she becomes an not only an object of lust, but her own carnal cravings and desires spin wildly out of control. It turns out that 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 step out of her sister's shadow and stop her from acting on her murderous impulses, all the while dealing with the newfound distance between them, and also navigating their mother's annoying but kind-hearted attempts to bond with her teen daughters. 

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 some very odd supernatural changes in not only her personality but her physical form, while Bridgette struggles to curb her sister's newly acquired  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 feminine.   

As a character driven slice of horror this is a prime cut of millennial horror with a lot of nuance and some nice character development, however the special effects of the low-budget flick are a bit shaky at times. Ginger's subtle transformations are handled quite nicely as she grows a tail and her nails grow into claws, canine teeth emerge, her 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 werewolf transformation is not the film's strength, I did not care for the hairless werewolf look, it was pretty gut-in-a-rubber-suit 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, 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: 

- NEW! Audio commentary by Mary Beth McAndrews and Terry Mesnard

- Audio commentary with director John Fawcett

- Audio Commentary with writer Karen Walton

- Canadian Uncanny: Stacey Abbott on Ginger Snaps (14:09) 

- NEW! A Blood Red Moon: Interview with director John Fawcett (26:44) 

- NEW! What Are You Wereing?: Interview with producer Steve Hoban (24:39) 

- NEW! The Art of Horror: Interview with Storyboard Artist Vincenzo Natali (20:53)

- Ginger Snaps: Blood, Teeth and Fur (66:34) 

- Growing Pains: Puberty in Horror Films (27:09)

- The Making of Ginger Snaps (4:50) 

- Cast Auditions and Rehearsals (17:45)

- Deleted scenes with optional director and writer commentaries (25:02)

- Production design work

- Creation of the Beast (4:58) 

- Trailers and TV Spots (4:45) 

GINGER SNAPS II: UNLEASHED (2003) 

Duration: 94 Minutes 27 Seconds 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.O Stereo and 5 1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles

Video:  1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)

Director: Brett Sullivan 

Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Eric Johnson, Janet Kidder, Pascale Hutton, Patricia Idlette, Tatiana Maslany 

Synopsis: Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed from director Brett Sullivan, sees Brigitte wrestling with her own transformation, as she is forcefully put into rehab and must identify friend from foe, all the while battling a male werewolf who’s stalking her. Tatiana Maslany, (She-Hulk: Attorney at law, Orphan Black) and Eric Johnson (Smallville, Fifty Shades) also star.

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 male 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 junkie 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 masturbation during a yoga session, which is truly a WTF moment. While inside she has to contend with a scumbag orderly named Tyler (Eric Johnson, American Gods) who trades drugs for sex acts with the young women at the facility, and a comics loving 14-year-oldnamed Miranda aka Ghost (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black), plus 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 facility with the pair then holing-up in her Ghost's grandmother's vacant house, till the werewolf eventually catches up to them.  

As a sequel 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, no doubt thanks to the involvement of KNB FX. On the downside the film is not quite as gory as the previous, but it's still a solid entry, and it's also cool to see Tatiana Maslany in what was pretty much her first film role, having 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, and who fights against becoming a werewolf as were her sister embraced it. 

Special Features: 

- Audio Commentary with director Brett Sullivan, executive producers John Fawcett & Noah Segal, and producer Paula Devonshire

- NEW! Girl, Interrupted: Interview with director Brett Sullivan (24:10) 

- NEW! The Bloody Lunar Cycle: Interview with writer Megan Martin (20:32)

- 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 with optional director commentary: Alice Makes An Offer (2 min), Brigitte's Introduction (4 min), Plan to Action (2 min), Trapped/Carnivore (3 min) 

- Audition Tales: Screen Tests with Eric Johnson (4 min), Janet Kidder (2 min), Pascale Hutton (2 min), Patricia Idlette (2 min), Tatiana Maslany (3 min) 

- Storyboards (4 min) 

GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING (2004) 

Duration: 94 Minutes 29 Seconds 

Director: Grant Harvey 

Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Steve Hoban, Paula Devonshire, Grant Harvey

Synopsis: Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning from director Grant Harvey, depicts the ancestors of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald, in 19th century Canada. They must battle villagers and werewolves alike as accusations and attacks come at them from all sides. Can they make it out alive or will they succumb to a lycanthropic life?

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 Americana village that looks like it's just been attacked. An old woman there sees them and tells them they are cursed, that one of them is destined to kill the other, which spooks them, so they move on quickly. Not long after Gingers steps on a beer trap and is injured, but they are found by a indigenous Cree hunter (Nathaniel Arcand, Pathfinder) who leads them to nearby Fort Bailey, home of the Northern Legion Trading Company. The fort seems to have also come attack by same creatures that attacked the Cree village, it's wooden gates marred by deep claw marks and blood. It turns out that werewolves have claimed many lives at the fort and most of the surviving inhabitant have fled, leaving behind only 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 scrappy stragglers. The sister's arrival is met with great suspicion, and upon they are subjected to tests designed to see if they are werewolves. The test involves attaching a leach to sample their blood, if the leeches ingest infected blood they 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 from werewolves that the atmosphere is tense and distrustful, suspicion continues to follow the sisters. It's later 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 after missing their team-up in the previous sequel, 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, I prefer this sequel to the last. 

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary with director Grant Harvey, writer Stephen Massicotte and editor Ken Filewych
- NEW! Snap!: Interview with director Grant Harvey (22:50) 
- NEW! Girls on Film: Interview with producer Paula Devonshire (19:59)
- The Making of Ginger Snaps Back
- Deleted scenes with optional director commentary: Old Wives Tales (9 min), You Lie (2 min), Extended Burial Scene (2 min) 
- Grant Harvey’s Video Diaries (10 min) 

Audio/Video: All three films arrive on region-B locked Blu-ray from Second Sight Films in 1080p HD framed in 1.78:1 widescreen, with each film getting it's own dedicated disc and set of extras. This trilogy was previously issued on region-free Blu-ray from Australia's Via Vision Entertainments, and as there is no verbiage about the sources of these HD presentations I would assume they are the same HD masters licensed by Lionsgate for that previous release, as well as the Blu-ray of the first film from Scream Factory. With that said 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. Audio on all three films comes by way of uncompressed English language DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 with optional English subtitles. Dialogue is delivered cleanly and free of issues and the scores are well-balanced, I thought they sounded quite good. 

The 3-disc release arrives in a striking rigid slipcase featuring new artwork by Michael Dunbabin. Inside there's a tri-fold digipak housing the three Blu-ray discs. We also get a 112-page Illustrated Booklet with new some excellent new writing on the trilogy by way of essays from Meredith Borders, Kat Hughes, Dr Rachel Knightley, Mikel J Koven, Jolene Richardson, Zoë Rose Smith and Caelum Vatnsdal that explore the trilogy. 

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. 

From what I can tell this release has all the previously existing extras from the DVD era and even the Scream Factory Collector's Edition Blu-ray, in addition to newly produced Second Sight produced extras - this one has it all! - News stuff on the first film includes a new Audio Commentary by Mary Beth McAndrews and Terry Mesnard, the 27-min A Blood Red Moon: Interview with director John Fawcett; the 25-min What Are You Wereing?: Interview with producer Steve Hoban; and the 21-min The Art of Horror: Interview with Storyboard Artist Vincenzo Natali. 

New bonus content for the second film comes by way of 

the 24-min Girl, Interrupted: Interview with director Brett Sullivan and the 21-min The Bloody Lunar Cycle: Interview with writer Megan Martin; while the third film gets a 23-min Snap!: Interview with director Grant Harvey and a 20-min Girls on Film: Interview with producer Paula Devonshire. These are all fantastic new interviews that get into the influences on the film, the production, casting, special effects and much more, it's terrific stuff, and this is on top of hours of archival extras - this is a set that will take you hours to pour through. 

Limited Edition Contents: 
- Rigid Slipcase with new artwork by Michael Dunbabin
1112-page book with new essays by Meredith Borders, Kat Hughes, Dr Rachel Knightley, Mikel J Koven, Jolene Richardson, Zoë Rose Smith and Caelum Vatnsdal
- 5 Collectors' Art Cards

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. This new limited edition set from Second Sight Films with it's glorious packaging is top-notch, the trilogy looks and sounds quite nice and the array of archival and new extras make this a must-have for fans hungry for a deep-dive into this Canadian lycanthropic trilogy.