Horror
Film Index
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Ginger Snaps Back, 2004. Directed by Grant
Harvey. Katherine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Nathaniel Arcand, J. R. Bourn,
Hugh Dillon, Matthew Walker, Brendan Fletcher.
Synopsis: The Fitzgerald Sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, are wandering in the Canadian wilderness circa 1830. Having come across the remains of an Indian camp, they are told by the surviving oracle that they must "kill the boy, or one sister destroys the other." Further on down the path is a trading fort that has seen better days. The fort's supply team hasn't shown up yet and it is under siege by wild beasts the likes of which they cannot say. The fort's commander has a secret--his son hasn't been killed by their besiegers, but is now under lock and key so that the beast within him cannot be released. The fort's chaplain has a problem with our two heroines: he thinks they are an invitation to sin and wickedness; surely God's judgement will fall upon them all for such temptation. And Ginger soon has a secret: she's bitten by the commander's son, and it's only a mater of time before she turns into...something. The indian pathfinder at the fort knows something about the girls, too, and his fate is tied to theirs... Time out of Mind: In principle, I don't
mind the notion of taking the sisters from Ginger Snaps and letting
them replay variants of their story in different time periods. The notion
that Ginger and Brigitte are stuck in an endlessly recurring nightmare
has a certain crude power. This idea isn't really explored in this third
movie, per se, which is something of a flaw, I guess. By dropping our
heroines into the past in this way, the filmmakers already start out with
an audience that is saying "what the hell...?" They don't do
themselves any favors by the arbitrary anachronisms that pop up throughout
the movie. But this is a small kibbitz. The end result has less to do
with the previous two Ginger Snaps movies than it does with a Hammer
gothic, or, more to the point, Antonia Bird's wendigo film, Ravenous,
which this film resembles. As a ploy to keep a franchise alive, this may
or may not sit as well with fans of the previous two movies as, say, Halloween
III: The Season of the Witch sat poorly with fans of THAT series.
Audiences like their sequels consistent, after all, and this one strays
far afield of the original formula. There is a practical necessity to
this, though, given that our two heroines were pretty much off limits
for further development after the endings of the first two movies. In
any event, the revival of the characters in a new setting enables the
filmmakers to again focus on the relationship between the sisters--itself
the strongest element of the first film. Of course, this is a werewolf movie, and the werewolf was the weakest element in the first movie. It got better in Ginger Snaps: Unleashed (even though it was barely seen in that movie), and here we have a whole pack of werewolves. In general, they've improved again. They're hairier now (thankfully), and they don't break the spell if the camera focuses on them for more than a split second (as do the werewolves in, say, Dog Soldiers, another film that resembles this one by turns). Unusual for a werewolf movie: there's no transformation scene as such. In any event, while I enjoyed the new direction the filmmakers have taken this series, and while I applaud them for attempting something more than a retread of the previous films, I suspect that this franchise is done teaching the dog new tricks.
1/13/2005 |