chaos-rampant
The Ginger films are interesting cases in recent horror I think; for approximately 2/3rds of their duration we get horror reassembled from tradition to address teenage angst, the vogue is to call this post-modern, but in doing so we also get worthwhile sketches about the conditions that give rise to horror in the first place.It has always been the anguished mind spinning fears and projecting outside, this is important to be able to note in a good horror. It was only later that these things were codified, systematized in the form of a tradition about vampires or werewolves. So it is always a step in the right direction for me when a movie treats monsters beneath the literal level, questions their formation, penetrates, dismantles.In the first Ginger film horror was the woman suddenly awakened inside the teenage body, awakened by blood. Pubescent anxieties sprung from this, in the form of a baffling newfound lust for sex and blood. This was given to us as a werewolf film, with a rampage that was twisted around; the hormonal beast gave her a renewed thirst for life, but which she could not quench without destroying.This second one is potentially more complex stuff, a feverish fantasy enacted in the space between two unreliable eyes.One is the meek sister who had to suddenly grow up and assume responsibility with the events of the first film. She has developed an addiction to the serum she takes against the werewolf virus. The idea is that all the time we may be watching any young girl struggling with a drug problem. So pubescent anxieties of a damaged mind this time fueled by the pains of rehab; but again imagined as a werewolf film around her, with the beast out to mate with her.Her sister from the first film is the ghost friend, hallucinated, obviously a nod to American Werewolf in London.The other unreliable eye is a girl in the same rehab center tending to a badly burned grandmother, a really impressionable girl we learn. Her only getaway is a comic-book about werewolves, a fiction she uses to assert reality and assist the other.Her name none too subtly is Ghost, but a ghost eye that is used in a very smart way. We are led to believe she was behind her grandmother's accident, but which is later dispelled as only a mundane household mishap, a bedtime cigarette. So on top of these two, it's our eye that also becomes unreliable, impressionable, prone to imagine horror; all told it's a pretty good device really, lowering us in the level where all the werewolf stuff would work as our own fantasy.But as with the first film, there is a last third that completely bangles the structure. As it turns out, our eye was never impressionable. We were right to imagine horror. The rational rehab director shows up at just the right time to realize that there truly are ghastly things going bump in the dark. Everything the film had dismantled so far, however hastily, is now pandered to.I suppose that how much the viewer will be satisfied by the finale of these films is directly proportional to how much straightforward blood-drenched action he expects from horror. I leave this last part to be enjoyed by traditional horror fans and keep what came before.
freeist
I am a die hard fan of the original Ginger Snaps, and this sequel is like having to use Windows 3.1 my whole life. I tried to allow for the curse of high expectations. What I did not expect was that this movie would raise them by starting with an excellent, original story concept, good music, an edgy atmosphere and a solid gold performance by Emily Perkins. Those are the only things I can recommend about this film, however, and half of those are thrown out midway through the story.The film's downfall is the screenplay, which was written by Megan Martin, who apparently had no previous screen writing experience. True, Karen Walton, who wrote the original (with director John Fawcett) also had no experience, but she also worked on that script for four years. It is harder to write for somebody else's character creations. For a sequel to a successful movie with a fan base, only chintziness could explain hiring a first-time writer for the sequel.So, with practically no help from the dialog, Perkins carries the entire first half of the film as the lonely, doomed Brigitte, bereft of Ginger, and bitterly fighting her own animalistic changes. The difference in Brigitte's character after the traumas she suffered in the first movie are both believably sad and shocking, showing that Perkins is an actress of the highest caliber. When Brigitte is found unconscious on a street with needle and cut marks on her arms, authorities assume she is a junkie and put her into a teen rehab center. It turned out that monkshood did not cure the curse, it simply delays it. So, she is trapped and can't prevent her transformation in a place where she endangers many people, and, of course, the staff doesn't believe her.From this mind-blowing story-concept we go to tedium, as the movie puts 75 minutes of material into 90 minutes. Midway through, it comes to life briefly, and then changes directions giving up everything it had going for it. Martin had written Brigitte into a corner, and so changed subject. I must admit here that I did not like the approach of dooming Brigitte from the beginning, and the twist at the end made me want to shoot the DVD as a traitor.Martin has made Brigitte far too restrained, including with people who would turn a Quaker homicidal. She only partially loses her temper once, and as a character noted, it was measured. Brundel's law as it applies to werewolves is, there are no such thing as pacifist werewolves, or rather, any werewolf movie depicting them is a bomb. While Perkins does her best, in the many pauses in the dialog, depicting Brigitte as holding back her fury, it simply does not work in a werewolf movie, or in a horror movie. If the audience is asked to believe that a werewolf could be that restrained, they begin to doubt it is even a problem. Katharine Isabelle continues her role as Ginger, who is dead of course, and who only Brigitte can see. Isabelle only has about fifteen lines, though. These are the sorts of lines that can only be delivered in the sleepiest way possible, and it can't be called dialog because usually Brigitte doesn't answer. Isabelle's part is almost all commentary and adds nothing to the plot. Her role seems half contractual obligation, half trailer-bait material. Mostly she just taunts Brigitte's about her futile efforts to fight the curse. Of all people, Brigitte and Ginger should still have a lot to say to each other. This is a huge waste of an actress who showed her mettle in the original.No, instead, the movie is wrecked by Martin's new character. Tatiana Maslani as "Ghost" does a good job as a mentally ill young girl, obsessed with comics. It's a good character concept, really, and Maslani does do an excellent job. Even so, putting Ghost in and making her a major character respectively required an unbelievable explanation and an idiot plot. I felt like she belonged in her own movie and was just an intruder here. Worse, she crowded out a larger part for Katharine Isabelle, and the movie is called "Ginger Snaps: Unleashed," right?About the idiot plot: almost every character is shown to be an idiot at the end, with the possible exception of Ginger, who likely isn't real. Idiot Ghost is lucky everyone else is an idiot. Even Brigitte becomes an idiot at the end, I lost respect for her when she was previously heroic. I can't believe she trusted Ghost, a character who gets introduced by taunting her!Finally, I have to point out the werewolf makeup is BAD in this film. I never knew werewolves had sow's ears and third-degree burns on their lips. At one point, they make Perkins look like Keith Richards, and by the end, she looks like an orc with an immobile mask so embarrassing that would have looked cheesy in the '60s. Except for the mask at the end, this is probably not the make-up artist's fault. The makeup actually looks better on the DVD extras and in the publicity photos than it does in the movie. This suggests the problem was with the Lighting, the Director of Photography, or the Director. Nevertheless, the movie does get the special effects right for the fully animalized werewolf. Other fans of the original seem to like this movie, but I can't help but see it as a major disappointment, though not a disaster. There was a much better story to be told here. Unlike the original, this did not have Karen Walton and four years of work on the screenplay. It falls short of its own promise, and not that of the original.(Upgraded two stars from my original review. Perkin's performance was that good, & liked seeing her and Isabelle together.)
