A rash of dog killings strikes the suburb of Bailey Downs. Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald are teenage sisters who harbor a fascination with death. As children, they formed a pact to move out of the suburb or die together by the age of 16. One night, while on their way to kidnap a dog owned by school bully Trina Sinclair, Ginger begins her first period. The scent of blood results in the girls being attacked by the creature responsible for the maulings. The creature bites Ginger and as the girls flee, the creature is run over by a van belonging to Sam Miller, a local drug dealer. Ginger foregoes going to the hospital because her wound has already healed.
Following the attack, Ginger undergoes transformations that concern Brigitte. She begins behaving aggressively, hair grows from her scars, she sprouts a tail, and menstruates heavily. Ignoring Brigitte's warnings, Ginger has unprotected sex with classmate Jason McCardy. Later, she furiously beats Trina in public and kills a neighbor's dog. Brigitte seeks out Sam to obtain information on what his van struck, and they agree that Ginger was attacked by a werewolf and is transforming into one. After a silver navel piercing proves ineffective as a remedy, Sam suggests infusing an extract of monkshood, also known as wolfsbane, a perennial plant often referred to in lycanthrope folklore.
Trina appears at the Fitzgerald home and accuses Ginger of kidnapping her dog. As Ginger and Trina struggle, Trina dies accidentally when she slips and strikes her head upon the kitchen counter. The sisters hide the body in a freezer. Brigitte accidentally breaks off two of Trina's fingers while removing her body to bury it, and the fingers are misplaced. On Halloween, Brigitte brings monkshood to Sam and he creates an extract of the herb. Brigitte is attacked by an infected Jason, and defends herself by using the monkshood syringe on him. His behavior suddenly changes, proving that the cure works. At school, she discovers Ginger's murder of the counselor and witnesses her killing the janitor. Ginger discloses her intent to target Sam next at the Greenhouse Bash, a Halloween party hosted by him.
The girls' mother discovers the fingers and Trina's corpse. She drives Brigitte to the Greenhouse Bash, telling her that she will erase the evidence of Trina's death by burning their house down. Brigitte arrives to find Sam fending off a nearly-turned Ginger. Brigitte wounds Ginger's and her own palm and clasps their hands together, infecting herself with Ginger's blood. She convinces Ginger of her loyalty and willingness to help her. As the sisters leave, Brigitte decides to abandon her mother. As Ginger feels her transformation approaching, Sam knocks her unconscious with a shovel. They take Ginger back home to prepare more of the cure for her.
On the way, Ginger fully transforms into a werewolf and escapes from the van. Sam and Brigitte hide in the pantry as Sam makes the cure. When he goes to find Ginger, she mutilates him. After finding Sam, injured and bloody, Brigitte tries to save him by drinking his blood to calm Ginger, but is unable to go through with it. Ginger senses Brigitte's insincerity and kills Sam. As Ginger chases Brigitte, Brigitte returns to the room where they grew up. Brigitte defends herself while holding the syringe in one hand and a knife in the other. Ginger lunges at Brigitte and into the knife, fatally wounding herself. Brigitte lays her head upon her dying sister's chest and weeps.
Peter Keleghan as Mr. Wayne, a teacher and guidance counselor at Bailey Downs High School
Christopher Redman as Ben
Jimmy MacInnis as Tim
Lindsay Leese as Nurse Ferry, the school nurse
Wendii Fulford as Ms. Sykes, the Bailey Downs High School gym and field hockey teacher
Ann Baggley as mother
Graeme Robertson and Maxwell Robertson as toddler
Pak-Kong Ho as janitor
Bryon Bully as hockey kid
Steven Taylor as puppy kid
Nick Nolan portrayed both the initial werewolf (nicknamed "the Beast of Bailey Downs" by the town's residents) and the "Gingerwolf", the werewolf which Ginger becomes.[6][better source needed]
Production
Development
Director John Fawcett has said: "I knew that I wanted to make a metamorphosis movie and a horror film. I also knew that I wanted to work with girls".[7] In January 1995, he talked to 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 the film would re-interpret the genre.[7] Walton has said, "a lot of werewolf movies seemed very much the same. My favourite was of course An American Werewolf in London, because it was at least a little punk about it, but it was still two white dudes grappling with the beast inside of them... I love stories that work on a lot of different levels, for a whole bunch of different kinds of people. That it turned out to be OK in the marketplace as just one girl's voice – and a director who really wanted to support that – is remarkable, I think, for the day".[5]
Fawcett and Walton encountered trouble financing the film. They approached producer Steve Hoban, with whom they had worked before, and he agreed to produce the film. Hoban employed Ken Chubb to edit and polish the story, and after two years they were ready to seek financiers.[7]
Motion International committed to co-financing and Canadian distribution, and Trimark Pictures agreed to be the co-financier, U.S. distributor, and international sales agent.[7] The film seemed ready to go into production by fall of 1998; however, negotiations with Trimark caused the producers to miss the budgeting deadline for Telefilm Canada, the Canadian 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. Lionsgate Films, who Trimark would end up merging with in 2000, took Trimark's place, and Unapix Entertainment agreed to distribute the film on DVD, along with Artisan Entertainment for the American DVD release.[7] The film's budget was $4.5 million.[2]: 16
Casting
Casting the two leads met with substantial difficulty. While a casting director was easily found for Los Angeles, Canadian casting directors proved to be appalled 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 teenagers. The Toronto Star's announcement that Telefilm was funding a "teen slasher movie" met with a flurry of debate and outrage in the media, which generated a significant amount of adverse publicity in proportion to the size of the project.[7][8]
Casting took place in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Perkins and Isabelle auditioned on the same day at their agency in Vancouver, reading to one another off-camera. When their taped auditions arrived, screenwriter Karen Walton said that they were exactly as she had pictured the characters.[7]
Coincidentally, both actresses were born in the same hospital, attended the same preschool, elementary, and private schools, and are at the same agency. Perkins was twenty-two at the time and Isabelle four years younger, but Perkins was cast as the younger sister.
Attention then turned to the next most important characters: the drug dealer and the mother roles. Mimi Rogers readily agreed to play the mother, Pamela, saying that she liked the black humour and comic relief in the role.[7] Robin Cook, the Canadian casting director, put forward one of her favourites, Kris Lemche, for the role of drug dealer Sam. After seeing Kris's audition, Fawcett hired him.[7]
In 2021, Fawcett revealed that Scarlett Johansson was originally offered the role of Brigitte, but her mother did not want her involved after reading a National Post article about a boycott of the film by casting directors in Canada.[9]
Principal photography took place between October 25 and December 6, 1999, lasting a little over six weeks. Three of Toronto's suburbs, Etobicoke, Brampton (Kris Lemche's hometown), and Scarborough served as the suburb of Bailey Downs.[7] 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.[7][10]
On the first day of shooting in the suburbs, all the still photographs for the title sequence were created. The bloody, staged deaths drew a crowd and Fawcett worried about upsetting the neighbours.[7] The girls were covered in fake blood for the shots, and at the time, a homeowner's basement served as their changing room. Each time they needed to change, someone had to distract the homeowner's four-year-old child.[10]
Long shooting days pushed the earliest possible start later each day until the scenes written for day were being shot after late into the night. Director of photography Thom Best solved the problem by using diffusion gel and four eighteen kilowatt lamps which generated enough light to be seen a mile high in the sky.[7]
The special effects proved to be a major hardship, as Fawcett eschewed CGI effects and preferred to use more traditional means of prosthetics and make-up. Consequently, Isabelle had to spend up to seven hours in the makeup chair to create Ginger's metamorphosis and a further two hours to remove them.[10] Often covered in sticky fake blood that required Borax and household detergent to remove, she further endured wearing contacts that hindered her vision and teeth that meant she could not speak without a lisp. The most aggravating thing was the full facial prosthetic which gave her a permanently runny nose that she had to stop with cotton swabs.[7]
Post-production
Beginning in December 1999, Brett Sullivan worked with Fawcett for eight weeks to create the final cut of the film.[7] Despite the short time for editing, the film was nominated for a Genie in editing.[11] Despite a similarly tight schedule in the sound department, the film would also be nominated for a Genie in sound editing.[11]
Ginger Snaps premiered at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest in August 2000. The following month, it played at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it briefly received media attention following the positive word-of-mouth it had built up from Munich. Although called one of the stand-outs of the Toronto festival, attention died off and the film followed an unfocused release strategy, playing at various film festivals and building up more word-of-mouth.[2]: 86–87 Ginger Snaps was released to Canadian cinemas in May 2001. It grossed CAD $425,753 domestically, making it the fifth highest-grossing Canadian film between December 2000 and November 2001.[12] Owing to a cult following, it has achieved significant video and DVD sales. These earnings, combined with moderate theatrical success abroad, led to the production of two further films.
Reception
The film has a 90% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 61 reviews; the average rating is 7.3/10. The site's consensus reads: "The strong female cast and biting satire of teenage life makes Ginger Snaps far more memorable than your average werewolf movie – or teen flick".[13] Critics' praise was centered on the quality of acting by the two leads, the horrific metamorphosis reminiscent of Cronenberg,[14][15] the use of lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty, and the dark humour.[16][17][18][19] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club wrote that the film was "seemingly left for dead" after playing at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival but is now considered a cult film.[20] It is ranked 78 on Time Out London's list of 100 best horror films, Tom Huddleston calling it "the best teenage werewolf movie, period".[21]
Critics who panned the film thought the puberty metaphor was too obvious, the characters too over-the-top (especially the mother), and the dark humour and horror elements unbalanced.[22][23]
Because the film links lycanthropy to menstruation and features two sisters, Ginger Snaps lends itself to a feminist critique. Feminist scholar Bianca Nielsen wrote: "By simultaneously depicting female bonds as important and fraught with difficulties, Ginger Snaps portrays the double-binds teenage girls face. 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".[24]
The 2009 film Jennifer's Body draws frequent comparisons to Ginger Snaps. Their plots, and the relationship between the two main female characters, are strikingly similar in many ways. Despite this, Jennifer's Body writer Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama have controversially not referenced it as an influence.[39]
The music video for Sabrina Carpenter's "Taste" features a visual reference to the scene where a character is impaled by a white picket fence.[40]
^Schaefer, Glen (January 31, 2002). "Memento tops with local critics". The Province. Vancouver, B.C. p. C2. ProQuest269312708.
^Monk, Katherine (January 31, 2002). "Much more to the year in film than Harry Potter and hobbits". The Vancouver Sun. Vancouver, B.C. p. C27. ProQuest242515494.
