Sometimes I wish I was hetero. The two cute young ladies who star in "Ginger Snaps" are real hotties. The older one shows off her gorgeous bod quite a bit in this teeny, lycanthropic, horror flick. The young one doesn't, and rightly so, because she is probably only 15 or 16 or so. She's kinda alt-rock and cute in that Christina Ricci my-daddy-touches-me-funny kinda way. The film starts off poorly with the two actresses, Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle, forced to deliver the most inane dialogue. This stuff sounds like what a 40 year old guy thinks teenagers talk like. It is bloated with slang terms that do not flow and colloquialisms that peg the bullshit meter. I kept waiting for one of them to say something like, "Well gag me with wolfbane" or something. It was bad. But as the film progresses the neologisms became less frequent ("You might as well check me in to the rubber motel" was the last one to pop up, however the guy wasn't talking about condoms). So, bottom line, after the iffy and a bit typical opening, the film's plot got intriguing.

Karen Walton's script opens up all kinds of interesting ideas and questions when dealing in this almost uncharted territory, that of female werewolves. By making her protagonist "cursed" with lycanthropy at the very onset of puberty, her first menstrual cycle, Walker discuss the changes that take place at such a time in a young woman's life. Even more convincing, it gives valid excuse for the changes a young female werewolf might be undergoing and compares the two metamorphoses, twisting the werewolf mythology ever so slightly for the script's own purposes. As female empowerment, the onset of lycanthropy, like the onset of puberty, acts as a catalyst for a young woman's flowering into vixen and slut. It's an interesting use of the genre.

Of course Walton also does some interesting stuff with her characters before the film's real plot begins, opening up a discussion about teen angst, teen depression and teen suicide. Also discussed is the often overlooked subject of sibling peer pressure. And herein lies the heart of her script's themes. For, at it's end, "Ginger Snaps" is about a young woman, a little sister, struggling to find her own path in her older sister's black, black shadow.

I wish Walton could have had a bit more time to set this idea up; she does do much of it quite well. But at 100+ minutes, the film is already bloated (oops - sorry - no pun intended) and it does seem to drag a bit at the end. At the film's climax, we are forced to endure a seemingly endless horror film cliched ending where the "good" guy/girl and the "bad" guy/girl battle it out to the end. But after the credits have faded and the ending sinks in, the message and theme of it becomes clear. Perhaps Walton and director John Fawcett did not want to spoonfeed us the message because it takes some meditation on the final scene to understand fully.

Fawcett does a really nice job of creating tension in the film. As a timid horror watcher, I found myself jumping and covering my eyes quite a bit. Admittedly, I am a pussy about this sort of thing. And the film, with it's scenes of animal mutilation and werewolf attacks is fairly bloody and putrid. Of course, the blood here is symbolic in a way too. And there is much humor to be found in the film, especially before the final sequence, to alleviate some of the tension. This film plays within the teen horror genre quite well, humor and all.

"Ginger Snaps" should be a huge hit. It's one of the most intelligent and interesting twists on an establish genre in quite a while. And it has the usual cute teenagers, a huge body count, lotsa blood and just enough sex. This film really surprised me --- in a good way! Note: Also with Mimi Rogers, who turns in a wonderful comedic performance as the girls' mother.

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