Ginger Snaps: A Werewolf Movie With A Difference

Ginger Snaps is a Canadian werewolf movie with a difference. Directed by John Fawcett, it was released in 2000 and tells the story of two teenage sisters named Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald.

Ginger is the oldest sister, at sixteen and Brigitte is a year younger. The mother remarks early on that neither have started their period and both seem unenthusiastic to change that fact. Not much later in the movie they refer to getting their period as getting 'The Curse'. Both daughters have an obsession with death, and make a slide-show of pictures of them faking a series of brutal and bloody deaths. This is referred to throughout the movie as "the girl's death project" by their parents, which makes it clear that it is not unusual- for them at least. The two girls also have a death pact: "Out by sixteen or dead on the scene, but together forever."

In the town they live in, a series of gruesome attacks have been launched on neighborhood dog's. One night, in revenge for relentless taunting, Ginger and Brigitte decide to convince school bully Trina that her dog has also been mutilated. They find a still-warm body of a slaughtered dog in the park, and decide to use it only to find it falls apart. Brigitte notices blood on Ginger's leg and points it out, thinking it is from the corpse. They're both shocked to find it's actually Ginger starting her first period.

Attracted by the scent of blood, the creature that's been plaguing their town attacks Ginger and drags her into the woods. Brigitte manages to rescue her sister and they flee for their lives, while the beast is hit by a van, driven by a boy from their school who is notorious for doing and dealing drugs.

When the sisters get home they see Ginger's wounds already healing, and that is that start of her long turn to lycanthropy. As she goes through the change throughout the month, her parents are unaware of the real reason and put the changes down to her going through puberty.

Throughout the rest of the movie, we see Ginger's character change severely, and Katherine Isabelle does a fantastic job of portraying the new found anger towards even her own sister. Ginger's character says at one point, showing how much she has changed: "I get this ache... And I, I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces."

Ginger Snaps is definitely a werewolf movie like no other, and won the Special Jury Citation award at the Toronto International Film Festival. With a sequel and a prequel, both nowhere near as successful as the first, it's a unique movie with a different take on lycanthropy, using the curse to symbolize Ginger going through puberty.