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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.

Mix and Match: Unfortunately this film is cobbled together from an uneasy mix of Night of the Living Dead, half-assed Native American mysticism, and gothic pretension. The competing influences don't mix well and the movie never really finds a theme to carry it through. A short word about the Native American mysicism, though: I like the story of the wendigo. Linking the story of the wendigo to the lycanthropy that is already the stock in trade of the Ginger Snaps movies seems like a good idea (these films, after all, are Canada's first important contribution to the horror genre since David Cronenberg). But with the wendigo, you get a whole bunch of other baggage concerning Native American prophesies, the history of conflict between Europeans and Native Americans, and a bunch of other stuff. This mix muddies the waters and detracts from the core of the movie. Worse still, it doesn't play fair. By setting up the denoument of the film in a sweatlodge fever dream, the film then fails to follow through with its premise. The ending of the movie smacks of cheating, actually.

Formal Particulars: If the film escapes the doghouse at all, it is because some of the formal particulars are relatively strong, especially given the scale of the production. Both Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle are terrific in their roles. Having played these characters three times now, they seem to inhabit them more or less completely. Perkins is better than Isabelle, but that has been the case in all three movies. The most dramatic changes in the third movie when compared with the first two are the production values and the production design. Even while the screenplay lets the film down at practically every turn, the visual appeal of the film never wavers. Most of this can be laid at the feet of cinematographer Michael Marshall, who has taken everything he learned working with Guy Maddin and applied it here. Marshall understands that, in the best tradition of Terence Fisher and Mario Bava, the visual flourish--the mood, if you will--is often more than enough to justify the production even if the screenplay is weak. That's certainly true here. Add this to eye-decievingly opulent sets by Todd Cherniawsky (himself a veteran of very high profile, highly designed movies) and this movie looks a LOT better than it has any right to look.

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