Not your typical
werewolf film, Ginger Snaps stars newcomers Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins as a couple of teenage
"Goth" sisters, Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald. Fascinated by death, the macabre and all things dark,
they are regarded as somewhat bizarre and geeky by the rest of their school and constantly picked on by
the school bitch Trina Sinclair (Danielle Hampton).
But both girls lives are radically changed one fateful evening when Ginger is attacked by a strange wolf-like creature in the nearby woods. After Brigitte manages to get her back home, she is alarmed to discover that Ginger's wounds have already virtually healed.
Soonafter, people at the school begin to notice a change in Ginger. She develops an attitude, starts hanging out with the school dope heads, then proceeds to beat the crap out of their arch enemy Trina. Her parents and the school nurse put it down to hormones, but after Brigitte finds that Ginger is also growing hair in all the wrong places and starts sprouting a tail, Brigette realises that adolescence has nothing to do with her sister's recent behaviour.
Fortunately though, help is at hand. The school dope dealer Sam (Kris Lemche), who just happened to run over the offending creature with his truck, realises what's going on and thinks he has a solution. Using his expert knowledge on botanical plants (particularly the herbaceous variety if you take my meaning) he comes up with what might be a herbal remedy. However, will it work and can he and Brigitte get it to Ginger before she spreads the infection to anybody else?
Witty, darkly humoured, suspenseful and tragic. This is definitely one of the better werewolf films to have emerged in quite some time. It was just unfortunate that it went virtually direct-to-video in the US, and so didn't receive much hype when released to UK cinemas (in fact it was released in the UK before the US even got it) despite favourable reviews, being one of a small number of movies that came out in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings in the US, and so got a lot of unfair bad publicity.
But don't listen to the nay sayer's, see this for yourself it's great fun!
