Ginger Snaps Back (DVD)
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The third time is a charm for this devilishly delightful franchise of cult-fave Canadian werewolf films. The first two are hackle-rising horror semi-precious gems for sure, but Ginger Snaps Back has even more bite.
The first Ginger Snaps movie was an instant cult horror hit in 2000. “They don't call it The Curse for nothing!” read the tagline of the smart, irreverent and modern tale of terror. Sisters Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins) were ostracized by their high school classmates because of their morbid leanings. The two teens were obsessed with death until they got a taste of the real thing -- soon after being attacked by what the girls thought was a wolf, Ginger began to exhibit not only strange behavior, but odd bodily changes which coincided with her first menstruation. In the end, Brigitte was left to go on by herself.
In the second film, Unleashed, Brigitte’s on the run from her hometown, and she tries to prevent what happened to Ginger from bedeviling her by shooting up with monkshood. Caught in a drug-induced state by the authorities, Brigitte is sent to rehab. Without her drug of choice, she is deprived of the only thing that will stop her from turning into a killing beast. Ginger makes a few -- too few -- appearances in spooky dream sequences and flashbacks.
A good installment or standalone film, Ginger Snaps Back reveals the backstory of how the Fitzgerald sisters (again played by Perkins and Isabelle), came to be afflicted with the werewolf's curse in 19th century
The Ginger Snaps budget has obviously gone up, commensurate to its popularity. Ginger Snaps Back has the best werewolves (and lots of ferally beautiful, real wolves), the nicest costume and set design, and certainly the prettiest cinematography (lenser Michael Marshall provides a crisp, gothic, and artistic portrait of the werewolf mythos and brings the 19th century to dark and stark life).
Although I did enjoy Ginger Snaps back most of all of the three films, it is not without its problems. It lacks the biting humor of the first two, and about 3/4 of the way through it drags terribly. It also has some really, really bad wigs. Still, it is well worth seeing and is a howling good time for fans of gorgeous gore, supernatural suspense and hairsbreadth horror.
Unfortunately, Lion's Gate Home Video did not see fit to send a review copy of the DVD with the additional release material. It's a shame when distributors do this, because a lot of viewers choose whether to buy or to rent based upon the "extras" and how they are reviewed. I can't tell you anything about them, except that they include a director's video diary; Wolfboy special effects and makeup; and "Blood, Guts, and Fire" -- a death scene dissected.
(by Staci Layne Wilson)
| I thought this movie was great, but not on par with the first two installments. In my opinion, Unleashed was the most superior of the three simply because I can relate to the subject matter of rehab and abuse. I thought it was beautifully done and acted all around and the characters (especially ghost) were the most memorable of the series. The origional will always hold a special place in my heart, though, since it led this to be one of my favorite franchises in genre history. | |
| 01-08-2005 by MetalHeadDave | discuss |
| I have seen all three movies of the Ginger snap saga and I realised that this movie just doesn't fit in the saga. Despite a higher budget and better special effect this movie simply lacks the humor and the setting of the two firsts movies. Even if the second isn't as good as the first I think that at least the story has more substance then the third one, which is simply look like a try to make more money with a formula that worked for two movies. The only thing they forgot is that using the same caracter in a different setting in which they don't belong make this movie only an inferior copy of the two firsts. As an explanation as to where the curse come from it's rather weak and only show us that the director/scenarist had not enough imagination to create some more caracter or use a different approach scince the way the movie progress is pretty much like the precedant ones. The worst part is that it seems to have been made with no prior consultation of the precedant movies and it simply doesn't fit in the story told by the firsts movies. The movie in itself except for the weak scenario isn't this bad but in the serie this film is terrible. As a prequel I never saw worse scince it has nothing to do in the story, in fact the only link it has with the other movies is the caracters and they don't even keep their full personnality. For this reasons I consider it's the worse movie of the serie. But it's a good film anyway | |
| 01-07-2005 by Daghda | discuss |