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Watched on: Shudder, but it’s also on Amazon Prime

Ran: 9.42 miles, 8’44”/mile, 01:22:24 (long run)

 

It was Long Run Night! And for longer treadmill runs I’ve found that what I really need is an old favorite, something that will engross me so the miles don’t drag on forever, but also a story that I know pretty well so that if I zone out while running and miss a line or two I won’t be lost. I settled on Ginger Snaps, which has been a solid fave-rave of mine for a couple of decades now. C’mon, Canadian goth girls and lycanthropy as a metaphor for menstruation? What’s not to love?

 

Brigitte and Ginger are 15-year-old sisters with a bad case of the suburbs and a preoccupation with death (which is a natural symptom of a bad case of the suburbs). When we meet them they’re shooting a photo essay of staged graphic death scenes for a school project. Soon after, Brigitte gets bullied by a normie named Trina during gym class; how should Brigitte and Ginger get revenge? Well, there’s a mysterious beast on the loose that’s been killing neighborhood dogs, so they decide to fake Trina’s dog’s death with leftover gore from their photo essay. But on the night of the caper things don’t go quite as planned: first Ginger gets her first period (bummer), and then she’s attacked and mauled by a werewolf (arguably worse), which is then splattered across the grille of a van driven by Sam, the local drug dealer. I mean, a lot is happening.

 

Brigitte manages to get Ginger home and finds that Ginger’s wounds already seem to be healing, which is, y’know, great and maybe not so great. Over the next few days, Ginger deals with menstrual cramps and also coarse grey hairs sprouting from her healing wounds. Oh, and she’s growing a tail. Like I said, it’s a lot. Meanwhile, her personality has been changing, too—she gets stoned with boys, seduces Trina’s jockish boyfriend, eats the next door neighbors’ dog (if you see a dog in a werewolf movie, that dog is probably not going to have a good day)… just all the kind of stuff that’s putting distance between two goth sisters who used to be so close. Brigitte enlists the help of Sam the drug dealer in hopes of finding a cure, but Ginger’s control is slipping fast. Meanwhile, mom and dad are usually pretty oblivious, but now they’re finding body parts in the yard…

 

What can I tell you? I love this film. I fell hard for it no more than three minutes in, when Ginger caresses her wrist with a kitchen knife before proclaiming “wrists are for girls. I'm slitting my throat.” What follows is montage of the girls’ death scene pictures, comprising one of the most beautiful and memorable opening credits sequences I know. Now seven minutes have elapsed and this flick has my heart on a chain for life.

 

I’ve mentioned the puberty / lycanthropy parallel, which is pervasive and some aspects are a bit subtle, like Brigitte keeping track of the days until the next full moon by using the free period-tracking calendar that came with Ginger’s first box of pads. In addition, you get some interesting sex-as-murder/murder-as-orgasm themes, as well as a soupçon of welcome feminist perspective. And mostly what makes it all work is that Ginger Snaps has three really solid female performances: Emily Perkins as Brigitte, Katharine Isabelle as Ginger, and the always-great Mimi Rogers as their mom, who really just wants what’s best for her girls, whether that’s pre-treating Ginger’s gore-soaked underwear or covering up her murders by blowing up the house.

 

There are only a few weak spots. One is a plot point that relies on either the longest mommy-daughter sex talk or the most efficient chest freezer ever, because corpses don’t freeze solid that fast. (Ask me how I know!™) Another is the same weak spot in pretty much every werewolf movie I’ve ever seen, which is… the werewolves. The effects aren’t super-great, but honestly, werewolf effects never are. And the last is a minor quibble, which is that after the beginning of the movie does all this bold and interesting stuff, the final 20 minutes or so is a fairly standard cat-and-mouse hunt through a dark house. But even that is done better than most; it’s genuinely tense, with some real scares.

 

Bottom line: this is one I come back to again and again. If you haven’t seen it, give it a whirl. And if you like it, in many ways the sequel is even better—but more on that after another run.