Night 20 of 31 Nights of Horror

In 1985 I watched the Michael J. Fox comedy Teen Wolf. I loved it and did for a long time. Ginger Snaps is like the anti-Teen Wolf and it is soooo much better. Both are coming of age movies about outcast teens that become werewolves. Both have scenes with sports in them and both movies star Canadians, That’s pretty much where the similarities end.

This is another film that I had heard mentioned a lot over the years, but never watched. I could say I don’t know why I avoided it, but the truth is probably misogyny. At it’s core this is a story about high-school, teen girls and menstruation and I didn’t think I wanted to watch a movie about any of those things. I was wrong, and I wished I had watched this sooner.

My favorite thing about Ginger Snaps is the realism. No, I don’t believe werewolves are real and this is an accurate depiction of them, I mean it feels like the filmmakers started with the premise, “If my sister and I are out walking at night and are attacked by a strange animal, how would we react?” and everything flows from that. Their actions, reactions, the way they talk and behave are all natural and believable. That’s a big pet peeve of mine, when I think characters aren’t behaving like a reasonable person would, it pulls me right out of the story, so at the start of the film, I didn’t think I was going to like it, because I didn’t like Ginger and Brigitte.

Why are they so angry? Why are they so mean to their parents? Why do they hate life so much when they don’t seem to have anything to complain about? But that’s an old person’s instinctual response to teenagers. I see it a lot in people my age. We’ve forgotten how it FELT to be that age. What seems trivial and unimportant to us now in hindsight is the entire world to them. When I think back to how my kids were in their teens, how my grand-kids are now, the Fitzgerald sisters are 100% believable.

For a low budget film, it looks fantastic. Google says the average studio movie in 2001 cost $47.7 million, Ginger Snaps had only 4.5 to work with, which is $1.4 million LESS than the GOAT of werewolf movies was given in 1981. A lot of that I think can be attributed to director John Fawcett choosing to go far all practical makeup and effects. If they had used CGI it would have either eaten up a lot of the budget, or they would have had to settle for less or poorer quality. Going practical and keeping things dark worked very well.

I shouldn’t have slept on this film for so long, and I think it’s a lesson to be more open minded. The question arises though, do I watch the sequel? I haven’t had a lot of luck with sequels this month, especially with movies I really enjoyed.