The story is about two sisters and one night walking home, the elder, Ginger, gets bitten by a 'dog'. Slowly the bitten sister begins to change, in a social sense as well as a physical sense. She begins taking an interest in a boy she and her sister previously looked down upon, she distances herself from her sister, Brigitte, with whom she shared a very close bond before the bite, and she even experiments with drugs. In addition to this, her hair begins to change colour and she grows more of it all over her body. She even grows a tail. Brigitte becomes concerned and looks into many possibilities, one of which is that her older sister was bitten by and is now changing into a werewolf. She then goes about trying to find a cure, while having to deal with Ginger, who is getting cravings for blood and is changing into something that is less and less like the sister she was once so close with.
What makes this movie different than a lot of other paranormal horrors is that there is a really strong feminine voice present in both of the sisters. Other than Buffy, women play the wilting heroine in horrors, and in a lot of other genres as well. Not so in this movie. Ginger has a very powerful personality throughout the whole movie. Even before the change, she'd stick up for Brigitte when she got picked on and would talk back to people who would speak against either her or her sister. After the change she exuded an even more pronounced air of self- confidence. she doesn't show doubt. Brigitte on the other hand at first seems very timid and meek, which she might be, Brigitte displays an inner strength that ginger lacks. She resists the temptation of power, which she would get if Ginger bit her and she turned into a werewolf. She seems like a follower at the beginning, but she's just loyal.
Something else that makes this movie interesting is that it's an allegory of puberty for girls. After Ginger gets bitten, she also gets her period for the first time. Then when she is reacting weird to being bitten by a werewolf, adults just assume she's acting so abnormal because 'its that time of the month' instead of seeing it for what it is. It's a great social commentary on how society tends to deal with women as something foreign and potentially scary, especially around menstruation. The funny thing was that it was women voicing these views. The mom just fluffs off Ginger's moody behaviour as 'growing up', and the school nurse does the same thing when Ginger tells her about her symptoms. All of the Ginger Snaps movies have some sort of feminist theme if you look for it, but this one is the most blatant and deals most directly with how as a society we choose to perceive women as foreign, evil, and abnormal.
Even without the allegorical reference this was an awesome movie. It was fast-paced and suspenseful. On my top five list for paranormal movies of all time!
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