The first thing you need to know before you watch Ginger Snaps is that's a real horror movie. That means genuinely unsettling, disturbing, makes-your-skin-crawl kind of stuff. And you're plunged right into this from the start. The opening scene involves a mother and her young son discovering that the family dog has been torn to pieces, bloody scraps and guts all over the back yard ... which pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

In a way it's not really that gratituous. The whole movie is a metaphor for adolscence, which in itself is a pretty gruesome thing to have to go through. There are these two morbid sisters, Ginger and Brigette, who are afraid of growing up so much that they have a suicide pact together. They are obsessed with death, and for art class they take photos of each other in disturbingly realistic fake death poses. Ginger begins going through puberty, has her first period, and whoosh! Cue the werewolf attack.

The initial changes she goes through are pretty common -- mood swings, bleeding, pains, hairy legs, growing a tail ... okay, maybe that last one isn't quite so common. Brigette, along with a drug dealer named Sam who accidentally hit the original werewolf with his van, begin to suspect what's really going on and start thinking of how they can cure the disease of lycanthropy. The idea of werewolves is introduced early on, and the characters accept it pretty quickly after the things they see which means we can just get on with the story.

Karen Walton has written a fantastic script here, and John Fawcett proves himself a competent director. All of the leads are excellent in their roles, with the two lead actresses Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle expertly playing the disturbed Fitzgerald sisters with fantastic chemistry. Kris Lemche is also noteable as the drug dealer, giving a performance reminiscent of Christian Slater's shining moment in "Heathers". In fact, the two movies are similar in tone in a number of ways, and both have become cult classics with very similar audiences. The special effects team, headed by Paul Jones who worked on such projects as "Dracula 2000" and "Wolf Girl", have also done a pretty good job, creating some great-looking physical effects, with blood and guts piling up in every passing minute. The design of the wolf itself is interesting and original, giving us something that we really haven't seen before.

And so, though not for the faint of heart, this dark and wonderful piece of work ranks as probably the smartest, most subtle and intelligent werewolf movie ever made.

"Ginger Snaps" is a heart-stoppingly realistic werewolf tale. Sexy, Erotic, Beautiful, Violent, Bloody, Gory, Original, and over all just spectacular. Katherine Isabelle who plays Ginger is not only great, but hot as hell, even in the pre-wolf make-up stages where she looks human still and sporting white bangs like Rogue from "X-Men".

The werewolf is not perfect, but it is effective. The sound effects are great. The acting is great. Overall a big success in the werewolf genre, only topped by one other film "Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed" (forget that crappy prequel)

MrDragon811's Review

Another movie done well, among my favorites.

Rob of Necrodemon's Review

This movie surprised the hell out of me. Good story, good acting, and the two sisters are wicked.

I was impressed with the werewolves and the realism.

Highly recommended. It is a fun movie.

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The Wolf It's always refreshing when a werewolf movie comes along that ignores most of the Hollywood additions to the werewolf myth over the last sixty years. There are no silver bullets, no pentagrams, and rather than changing only at the full moon, this time it's suggested that the change to wolf is permenant after the first month. It sticks with the idea that being bitten by a werewolf is most common way to get infected, but also utilises the idea of having unprotected sex with a werewolf as a way to pass on lycanthropy. This of course also links to the common teenage problem of sexually transmitted diseases, as the whole movie is one big metaphor for adolescence. This idea is explored extremely well here, and the female werewolf develops cramps, grows hair and bleeds, while the male werewolf gets all of the above plus acne (see second photo down). Oh yeah, and they grow tails and fangs as well ... all of these physical effects are very well done (see third photo down), but as usual what it all comes down to is the final transformation into wolf form. The transformation scene is very brief, and takes place in the back of a dark van. It's just a brief collection of vaguely unsettling physical makeup effects, that works pretty well, just before we are introduced to the Ginger as the Big Bad Bitch itself. Okay ... four-legged werewolves are tricky. But this one isn't at all bad. Thanks to the great design you can hardly even tell that it's just some poor guy scuffling around on all fours inside a wolf suit (see below, right) ... but it's not that great. It's a very slight step up from American Werewolf, and disappointing considering this is twenty years on. But the design itself is very interesting -- it's not often you see a white-haired werewolf. They went for kind of a 'skeletal' look with minimal fur, but aside from that it's a lot like John Landis' own 'hellhound'. The illusion of agility is given through great directing, cutting quickly between shots and some great sound effects. In the end, you do get the impression that this is one heck of a dangerous beast, and most of the time it remains convincing.

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