Ginger Snaps

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This article is about the film. For for the cookies, see Ginger snap.
Ginger Snaps

Ginger Snaps poster
Directed by John Fawcett
Produced by Karen Lee Hall
Steven Hoban
Written by Karen Walton
John Fawcett
Starring Emily Perkins
Katharine Isabelle
Music by Mike Shields
Cinematography Thom Best
Editing by Brett Sullivan
Distributed by Motion International
Release date(s) September 10, 2000 (Toronto Film Festival)

May 11, 2001
(Canadian theatrical)
Running time 108 min.
Country Canada
Language English
Budget Cdn$6,000,000
Followed by Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Ginger Snaps is a 2000 Canadian horror film directed by John Fawcett about two close teenage sisters, Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald (played by Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins), who are obsessed with death. The title is a pun. A ginger snap is a popular type of cookie. However, the word "snap" could also be seen in the context to mean either to lose one's self-control or the quick, aggressive bite of a dog. It was in production at the time of Columbine and another school shooting in Canada, which fueled a public controversy due to the horror aspects and the funding provided by Telefilm.

Ginger Snaps was well received by the critics and was compared to David Cronenberg's horror films.[1][2] Critics enjoyed the clever use of lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty and praised the lead actresses. The film won the best Special Jury Citation award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The film's success translated into a sequel, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, and a prequel Ginger Snaps Back, which were filmed back-to-back in 2004. While Ginger Snaps 2 enjoyed a wider release than the original, Ginger Snaps Back went direct-to-video.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The two Fitzgerald sisters Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are inseparable. They are both fascinated by the macabre and have sworn to commit suicide together before they turn sixteen. They are outsiders at school and have no friends besides each other. One night they set out to get their revenge on a schoolgirl who has slighted them, when a wild animal attacks Ginger. That same night Ginger starts puberty and her body begins to change, but the sisters suspect that not all of her changes are caused by puberty alone.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The opening credits play over a slideshow of photographs of the Fitzgerald sisters' staged deaths. After the credits, we learn that the photos were being shown to their class. They are sent to the office and reprimanded for the sickening display.

After school, they are supposed to be practicing field hockey, but instead they are smoking and playing a game of predicting how people they know will die. AS they are describing Trina Sinclair's (Danielle Hampton) death, Trina herself overhears them by chance, and angrily knocks over Brigitte. The sisters later decide to get revenge by kidnapping Trina's dog and sending her gruesome photos of her dog's mock death (like the opening slideshow).

They set out at night to accomplish this plan. On their way they come across another victim of the Beast of Bailey Downs, a wild animal that has been killing local dogs. They decide to take it with them so they can make it seem even more realistic. When they pick up the corpse, a leg comes off in Brigitte's grasp. They drop it in shock. Brigitte notes aloud that it is still warm, and tells Ginger that she has some blood on her. The blood is not from the dead dog, but rather Ginger is having her menarche, which they refer to as "the curse." As they panic, the Beast of Bailey Downs attacks them and drags Ginger into the woods. Brigitte pursues and comes across the Beast with its teeth sunk in Ginger. Brigitte hits it with her camera until it releases Ginger. The sisters flee, and cross a road. The Beast tries to cross the road, but a van hits and kills it. The sisters do not stop running until they arrive home.

Back at home Brigitte tends to Ginger's wounds. Brigitte is awestruck that the wounds are already healing, and in minutes Ginger is fully healed. After few days, Ginger begins growing hair at the site of her scratches, and she starts feeling strange new urges. She starts dressing provocatively, and has sex with a local high school boy. However, soon she progresses from lust to violence.

At school Brigitte asks the drug dealer, Sam (Kris Lemche) what he hit with his van, and he replies that it looked like a lycanthrope to him. His suspicion is proven true, as Ginger starts to grow thick hair all over her body and sprouts a tail. She also kills and partially eats a neighbor's dog. Brigitte helps to cover up for her, but Brigitte is horrified at her sister's behavior.

Brigitte and Sam, who believes that Brigitte was bitten, try to devise a way to cure lycanthropy. However, their first cure, a pure silver ring, is rejected by Ginger. Trina shows up one night unannounced and starts threatening the sisters. She slips, hits her head on the corner of the kitchen counter, and bleeds to death. The sisters bury the body in a playhouse in their backyard. To keep her sister and everyone else safe, Brigitte locks Ginger in a room.

Brigitte visits Sam again, and he tells her that they should try a monkshood solution. However, since it is late October he will have to grow the plant. Brigitte takes some monkshood from her mother, who was using it to decorate, and has Sam make the solution. On her way home to cure Ginger, she is forced to use it on the infected boy, when he attacks her.

In the meantime, Ginger has escaped from the room. It is now Halloween, and she goes to a massive Halloween party at Sam's greenhouse. Brigitte's mother (Mimi Rogers), who has discovered the body of the girl, wants to quit town with her daughters. She confronts Brigitte and drives them over to the party to get Ginger. Brigitte finds Ginger making sexual advances toward Sam. Together Sam and Brigitte subdue and load her into his van. As they take her back to the Fitzgerald house to prepare more monkshood, Ginger completes her transformation, losing all vestiges of her humanity.

When they arrive at the Fitzgerald house, Ginger escapes from the van. Sam and Brigitte hide in a close while he finishes the solution, but he is pulled from the closet. Brigitte arms herself with a kitchen knife and goes downstairs to find him. She approaches a heavily-wounded Sam, and Ginger kills him in front of her. Brigitte tries to fool the werewolf by drinking his blood, but she cannot keep it down. The werewolf sees this and lunges for Brigitte. After a brief chase through the basement, the werewolf jumps at Brigitte and is impaled on Brigitte's knife. The final shot is Brigitte crying as she listens to Ginger's death rattle.

[edit] Production

[edit] Pre-production

In January 1995 John Fawcett "... knew that [he] wanted to make a metamorphosis movie and a horror film. [He] also knew that [he] wanted to work with girls."[3] He talked with screenwriter Karen Walton, who was initially reluctant to write the script due to the horror genre's reputation for weak characters, poor storytelling, and a negative portrayal of women. However, Fawcett convinced Walton that this film would be a re-interpretation of the genre.[3]

As with any independent film, financing is always a trouble. Fawcett and Walton approached produced Chris Hoban, whom they had worked with before, and he agreed to produce the film. Hoban had the story edited and polished by Ken Chubb, and after two years they were ready to seek finaciers.[3]

Motion International committed to financing and distributing the film in Canada, and Trimark agreed to be the American distributor and financier.[3] The film seemed ready to go into production by fall of 1998, however negotiations with Trimark made the producers miss the budgeting deadline for Telefilm Canada, the federal film funding agency. Rather than go ahead with only 60% of the funding, Hoban decided to wait a year for Telefilm's funding. During this interval Trimark dropped the film. Lions Gate Films took Trimark's place, and Unapix Entertainment agreed to distribute the DVD.[3] The film ended up being made for a relatively small budget of less than $6,000,000 Canadian dollars.[4]

[edit] Casting

Tracking down the two leads was met with substantial difficulty. While a casting director was easily found for Los Angeles, Canadian casting directors were turned off by the horror, gore, and language. When one finally agreed to pick up the film, the Columbine shooting and another school shooting in Alberta suddenly thrust the public spotlight on violent teens. The Toronto Star's announcement that Telefilm was funding a "teen slasher movie" was met with a flurry of debate and outrage in the media, which generated a remarkable amount of publicity for such a small, independent film.[5][3]

Casting occurred in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle auditioned on the same day in Vancouver, and when their taped auditions arrived screenwriter, Karen Walton, said that they were exactly as she had pictured the characters.[3]

Interestingly both actresses worked for the same agency, attended the same private school, elementary school, pre-school, and were born in the same hospital. Perkins was twenty-two at the time and Isabelle was five years younger at eighteen, but Perkins was cast as the younger sister.

After six months of searching the two leads were set, and now the next most important characters, the drug dealer and the mother, needed to be cast. Mimi Rogers agreed to play the mother, saying that she liked the black humor and comic relief in the role.[3] Robin Cook, the Canadian casting director, suggested one of her favorites, Kris Lemche, for the drug dealer. After seeing Kris's audition, Fawcett hired him.[3]

Katharine Isabelle having a facial prosthetic applied.
Enlarge
Katharine Isabelle having a facial prosthetic applied.

[edit] Shooting

The film was shot between October 25, 1999 and December 6, 1999, lasting six weeks and two days. Three of Toronto's suburbs, Etobicoke, Brampton and Scarborough, served as the suburb of Bailey Downs.[3] Shooting outside during Toronto's winter for sixteen hours a day, six days a week meant that sicknesses would make their rounds through the cast and crew every few weeks.[6][3]

On the first day of shooting in the suburbs, all of the photographs for the title sequence were created. The bloody, staged deaths drew a crowd, and Fawcett worried about upsetting the neighbors.[3] The girls' were covered in blood for the shots, and at the time a homeowner's basement was serving as their changing room. Each time they needed to change, someone had to distract the homeowner's four-year-old child.[6]

The schedule was so off kilter that shooting for a day scene in the greenhouse started at midnight. The director of photography solved the problem by using diffusion gel and four eighteen kilowatt lamps, which generated enough light to be seen a mile off.[3]

Another major hardship was the special effects. Since Fawcett had eschewed CGI effects to use the more traditional means of prosthetics and make-up, Isabelle had to spend five hours getting outfitted to create Ginger's transformation and two hours to remove all the effects.[6] She was often covered in sticky blood that required Borax and dish detergent to remove. She had to wear contacts that hindered her vision, and teeth that made her speak with a lisp. The most aggravating thing was that the full facial prosthetic gave her a runny nose that she had to stop up with Q-tips.[3]

[edit] Cast

Katharine Isabelle as Ginger Fitzgerald
Enlarge
Katharine Isabelle as Ginger Fitzgerald

[edit] Reception

The film was well received by critics and boasts an 89% freshness rating on Tomatometer.[7] Critics' praise was centered on the quality of acting by the two leads, the horrific transformation reminiscent of Cronenberg, the use of lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty, and the dark humor.[8][9][10][11]

Critics who panned the film thought the puberty metaphor was too obvious, the characters too over the top (especially the mother), and the dark humor and horror elements unbalanced.[12][4] However, they did credit it as a worthy attempt and often gave it half marks on their star scales.

In terms of the public's opinion, the film earned Cdn$425,753 domestically, making it the fifth highest-grossing Canadian film between December 2000 and November 2001.[13] Owing to a cult following, it has managed to post significant video and DVD sales. These earnings combined with moderate success abroad have translated into the creation of a trilogy.

Because the film links lycanthropy to menstruation and stars two sisters, Ginger Snaps lends itself particularly well to a feminist critique. "By simultaneously depicting female bonds as important and fraught with difficulties, Ginger Snaps portrays the double-binds teenage girls face." and "Ginger is an embodiment of these impossible binaries: she is at once sexually attractive and monstrous, 'natural' and 'supernatural,' human and animal, 'feminine' and transgressive, a sister and a rival."[14]

[edit] Awards

The International Horror Guild named Ginger Snaps the best film of 2001.[15] Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema awarded it best film, best special effects, and best actress (Emily Perkins).[16] The Toronto International Film Festival gave it a Special Jury Citation.[17] Ginger Snaps won the first Saturn Award for best DVD release of 2002 from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA.[18]

Ginger Snaps was nominated for Genie awards in cinematography, editing, and sound editing.[19]

[edit] TV series

The trilogy's producers have stated that they are interested in making a TV series based on the films, possibly an anthology series based on Brendan Fletcher's appearance in the latter two films playing different characters.[20] As of 2006, nothing has materialized.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Kehr, David (2001). "She Was a Teenage Werewolf". New York Times. Retrieved November 18, 2006.
  2. ^ Lim, David. "Vicious Cycles Ginger Snaps; A Chronicle of Corpses; Kill by Inches" (2001). Village Voice. Retrieved November 18, 2006.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n TVA International (07-17-2000). Ginger Snaps: Press Kit. Press release. Retrieved on 2006-11-30.
  4. ^ a b Nusair, David. "Ginger Snaps (2001)". reelfilm.com. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  5. ^ Taylor, Charles (Oct. 26, 2001). "Ginger Snaps". salon.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-30.
  6. ^ a b c Allan, Keri. "Katharine Isabelle" (2001). sci-fi-online.com. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  7. ^ Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2006-12-14.
  8. ^ "Blood Sisters"(2000). Sight and Sound. Retrieved November 28, 2006.
  9. ^ Waldron-Mangani, Ian. "Ginger Snaps" (2001). ukcritic.com. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  10. ^ Axmaker, Sean. "'Ginger Snaps' is a teen werewolf film with real bite". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  11. ^ Gonzalez, Ed. "Ginger Snaps" (2000). Slant Magazine. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  12. ^ Chambers, Bill. "Ginger Snaps" (2001). filmfreakcentral.net. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  13. ^ Bracken, Laura. "Monsters make move on Edmonton" (2003). Playback Magazine. Retrieved November 19, 2006.
  14. ^ Nielsen, Bianca (March 2004). "Something's Wrong, Like More Than You Being Female": Transgressive Sexuality and Discourses of Reproduction in Ginger Snaps. Thirdspace. Retrieved on 2006-12-15.
  15. ^ International Horror Guild. Retrieved on 2006-12-11.
  16. ^ Semana Internacional de Cine Fantàstico de Málaga (Spanish). Retrieved on 2006-12-11.
  17. ^ The Film Reference Library. Retrieved on 2006-12-11.
  18. ^ Saturn Award Winners. Retrieved on 2006-12-11.
  19. ^ Canadian Awards History Search. Retrieved on 2006-12-11.
  20. ^ Grove, David. "Ginger Snaps - The Series" (2004). creaturecorner.com. Retrieved November 18, 2006.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

  • Fan site contains interviews with the director and actresses, the official press kit, soundtrack listing, and pictures.
  • "the curse is back..." contains additional screenshots as well as the music themes
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