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Ginger Snaps
"Heathers" meets "The Howling" in this smart, grisly werewolf pic.
The New York Post, October 26, 2001
By JONATHAN FOREMAN

'Ginger Snaps" is an enjoyably smart if uneven low-budget/high-gore horror flick that generally outclasses the recent would-be scary movies that have come out of Hollywood.

Screenwriter Karen Walton and director John Fawcett set their werewolf tale with a feminist edge among teens at a suburban high school in Canada.

And they make explicit in a darkly humorous and determinedly icky way the metaphorical connection between lycanthropy and the urges and surges that come with puberty - in a typical twist, their werewolfery is a disease that can be sexually transmitted.

The inseparable Fitzgerald sisters, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are self-willed Goth outcasts at their suburban high school. Smart but unhappy and immature teenagers, they are obsessed by death.

Then, on the night of Ginger's first period, she is attacked by the beast that has been killing the neighborhood dogs.

She recovers quickly from her wounds, but Brigitte notices that her sister's character is changing in ways that pull the two of them apart.

It isn't clear if it's the werewolf's infection or just hormones, but Ginger becomes ever more confident and sexual, even as she develops a taste for violence, destruction and blood.

Isabelle and Perkins are both excellent, and Walton's dialogue nicely captures the gaminess of so much high school teasing and banter. The strength of the performances makes it more of a shame that the last reel tends to drag and the climax of the film is rather disappointing.