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Ginger Snaps

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Ginger Snaps is a 2000 Canadian horror film directed by John Fawcett and starring Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle. It is the first installment in the Ginger Snaps series, followed by Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed and Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning. Its reputation includes a large cult following and significant critical acclaim.

Synopsis

In Bailey Downs, a rash of dog killings has been occurring. Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald are teenage sisters who harbor a fascination with death and, as children, formed a pact to move out of the suburb or die together by the age of 16. One night, while on the way to kidnap a dog owned by school bully Trina Sinclair, Ginger begins her first period. The scent of blood results in the girls being attacked by the creature responsible for the maulings. Sam Miller accidentally runs over the beast that was chasing them, saving the sisters.

Following the attack, Ginger undergoes transformations that concern Brigitte. Brigitte finds Sam for information on what he hit, and they both agree that Ginger was attacked by a werewolf and is transforming into one. Sam suggests infusing a monkshood extract, which is impossible to create as the plant is only found in the spring.

Trina shows up at the Fitzgerald house to accuse Ginger of kidnapping her dog. As she fights with Ginger, Trina is accidentally killed. The sisters narrowly avoid their parents and bury the body. Brigitte tells her sister she cannot go out anymore, but Ginger remains defiant.

On Halloween, Brigitte takes monkshood purchased by her mother for a craft project and asks Sam to make the cure, which is successful. Brigitte first uses the extract on Jason McCardy (who was infected by Ginger due to unprotected sex) when he attacked her, and she witnesses his immediate change in behavior, which proves it is a cure. At school, Brigitte discovers Ginger’s murder of a faculty member and witnesses her killing another. Ginger then informs her intent to go after Sam next at the Greenhouse Bash, a Halloween party hosted by him, leaving Brigitte alone.

Brigitte arrives at the party to find Ginger hurting Sam for rejecting her advances. In despair, Brigitte wounds Ginger's and her own palm and clasps their hands together, infecting herself with Ginger's blood. She convinces Ginger of her loyalty and genuine willingness to help her sister, ending their long fight. Brigitte and Sam take Ginger back to the Fitzgerald house in his van to prepare more of the cure for her.

Ginger fully transforms into a werewolf on the way home and escapes the van. Aware that she has transformed, Sam and Brigitte hide in the pantry as Sam makes the cure. When he goes to find Ginger, a transformed Ginger attacks and drags him away. After finding Sam, injured and bloody, she tries to save him by drinking his blood to calm Ginger, but is unable to go through with it. Ginger senses Brigitte's revulsion and insincerity, and she kills Sam in front of Brigitte.

Brigitte defends herself while holding the syringe in one hand and a knife in the other. Ginger lunges at Brigitte and into the knife, fatally wounding herself. Looking at pictures taken of both sisters throughout their adventures on the wall, Brigitte lays her head upon her dying sister's chest and sobs.

Detailed Plot
One day the fall of 1999, the Fitzgerald sisters were given a slide show assignment for one of their classes. Using Brigitte's camera and a lot of imagination, they put together a macabre presentation of photographs showing the sisters in various stages of death. Though their presentation impressed their classmates, their teacher, Mister Wayne, was sickened by their work and sent them to the guidance counselor's office.


During gym class, the sisters ran afoul of one of their rivals, a field hockey player named Trina Sinclair. Trina bullied Brigitte, pushing her onto the ground. Ginger, ever protective of her younger sibling stood in front of Trina and warned her, "Don't ever touch my sister again".


That same evening, Brigitte found herself set apart from her sister for the first time in her life. Ginger had gotten her first period, and Brigitte no longer felt that they were united against life as they once were.


That evening, Brigitte and Ginger went for a walk through a neighborhood park. While discussing the inadequacies of their lives, a werewolf, the Beast of Baily Downs, leaped out from the bushes and pounced on Ginger, dragging her off screaming into the woods. Brigitte tried to follow them, but was too frozen with fear to do anything. The creature battered Ginger at length, biting her across the shoulder. Brigitte beat on the creature with her polaroid camera, accidentally taking a snapshot of the beast. Ginger managed to get away and Brigitte and she ran towards the road. The beast followed them, but was struck by a vehicle driven by a young man named Sam. Terrified, the sisters raced home. Brigitte was shocked to see that the wounds across Ginger's body were already beginning to heal.


Taking refuge in a playhouse that the girls used when they were younger, Brigitte tried to research the lore concerning werewolves, but came up with nothing short of b-movie schlock fare. She began checking the calendar to see if Ginger's menstrual cycle somehow corresponded to the effects of the full moon. Ginger was repulsed by the notion that she was turning into a werewolf and dismissed Brigitte's concerns.


Brigitte eventually found Sam, the man who hit the werewolf with his van. Sam recognized that he had struck a lycanthrope, and Brigitte was surprised that he was willing to accept such a concept. Sam tried to press Brigitte for answers concerning what really happened that night, but she evaded his inquiries.


Before long, the effects of the werewolf infection began to have a demonstrative effect on Ginger. She grew more assertive, more promiscuous and even exhibited physical alterations such as pointed teeth and discolored hair. She even began growing a tail. This terrified Brigitte who went back to seek Sam's guidance.


Pretending that she was the one infected by the curse, she asked for Sam's help. Having read up on the subject, Sam theorized that pure metals might be the key towards driving out infection. This was the basis behind why weapons made of silver were known to harm werewolves. He gave Brigitte his silver earring to see if it might help. Brigitte went home and convinced Ginger to let her give her a naval piercing. She used Sam's silver earring, but it did not provide the results she was hoping for.


The following day, Brigitte had a run-in with one of her high school rivals, Trina Sinclair. Trina despised the Fitzgerald sisters and generally took her frustration out on Brigitte, whom she perceived was the weaker of the two. Trina pushed Brigitte onto the ground, but Ginger flew into a rage, leaping upon the girl and brutally pummeling her with her fists.


Following this incident, Brigitte found that Ginger had engaged in unprotected sex with a student named Jason McCardy and as a result, had spread the lycanthropy infection to him as well. Before such a thing could spread into an epidemic, she went back to Sam, telling him how the silver did not have any effect. Sam told Brigitte about Monkshood, a perennial flower that was a cousin to wolfsbane. Theoretically, Monkshood might have been able to provide the help Brigitte was seeking, but it only bloomed in the Spring time and this was now Autumn. Brigitte continued to look for another solution to her sister's condition.


That evening, Trina Sinclair came over to the Fitzgerald house carrying a dog leash and sporting a band aid across her forehead. She yelled at Brigitte and accused Ginger of stealing her dog. Ginger grabbed Trina in a headlock and dragged her inside. Brigitte tried to get her to stop, but Ginger kept antagonizing the girl. During the scuffle, Trina slipped and suffered a fatal head injury. Brigitte and Ginger heard their parents returning home so they hid Trina's body in the freezer. Once their parents were out of the way, they pulled Trina's now-frozen body out of the freezer and buried her. Unfortunately, Brigitte accidentally broke two of Trina's frozen fingers off and inadvertently dropped them on the ground in the back yard.


The following day at school, Jason McCardy accosted Brigitte inside a supply closet. He was now demonstrating advanced side effects of lycanthropy and blamed both Ginger and Brigitte for his condition. The timely arrival of the school janitor prevented Jason from harming Brigitte.


Brigitte discovered that her mother had come into possession of some Monkshood from the local crafts store. Locking her sister in the bathroom, she took the Monkshood and went to see Sam at the Greenhouse where he worked. Sam was surprised to see her, but even more surprised to see that she had actually acquired some Monkshood. He warned her that there was no guarantee that using this would work and he could not even begin to guess what side effects might occur. It could even be fatal. Sam also indicated that he knew that it was Ginger who was suffering from the effects of lycanthropy and not Brigitte. Reluctantly, he boiled the Monkshood down to a liquid and filled it into a syringe.


On her way back to see Ginger, Brigitte came across Jason attacking a small child. Turning around, Jason attacked Brigitte and she was forced to stab him in the neck with the syringe. She was surprised to see that the Monkshood solution had worked and that Jason was seemingly cured. Unfortunately, she was now in need of more Monkshood. When she returned home, she discovered that Ginger had broken out of bathroom. She tracked her back to the high school where she discovered that her sister, more murderous than ever, had slaughtered their guidance counselor Mr. Wayne. Brigitte made Ginger swear that they would wait until everyone left school for the day then find a way to clean up this mess. While attempting to dispose of the body, their efforts were discovered by the school janitor. Ginger pounced on the man, eviscerating him. She then stated her intent to go after Sam next.


That evening, Brigitte found Ginger attacking Sam at a Halloween party hosted at his greenhouse. The two girls feuded with one another and Ginger accused Brigitte of resenting her because she could never be like her. In response, Brigitte cut open her own hand and placed it on Ginger's bloody palm, thus infecting herself. She boldly stated, "Now, I am you." At this point, Sam revived and hit Ginger across the back of the head with a shovel. Brigitte told him that the Monkshood solution worked, but they needed to get Ginger back to the house to get more of it.


As they drove back towards the house, Ginger fully transformed into a werewolf and escaped from the van. Afraid, and unaware that she has transformed, Sam and Brigitte entered the house. They sensed the "Gingerwolf" lurking about and so they hid inside the pantry, giving Sam time to prepare a second syringe. Sam wanted Brigitte to take it first, but she told him no, insisting that he needed to cure Ginger first. Sam went out to find Ginger, but she leaped upon him, mutilating him.

Brigitte picked up the dropped syringe, and followed the blood trail downstairs. Weak from exhaustion, she collapsed on the steps, dropping the syringe in the process. She recovered it, but when she looked up, she saw Ginger hovering over the bleeding Sam. Brigitte slowly crawled towards them and began lapping at Sam's blood in an attempt to convince Gingerwolf that she was now like her. When she began choking on it, Gingerwolf sensed Brigitte's insincerity and killed Sam in front of her.


Brigitte ran away and the Gingerwolf chased after her. Kicking a hole in the plaster wall of the basement, she scrambled through the crawlspace back to the sisters' bedroom. The Gingerwolf clawed its way after her, but Brigitte picked up a knife and, holding it to defend herself, stabbed the werewolf in the heart, killing it.

Cast

  • Emily Perkins as Brigitte Fitzgerald: The younger sister of Ginger Fitzgerald and the daughter of Pamela and Henry Fitzgerald. She tries to help Ginger deal with the effects of lycanthropy that were slowly turning her into a werewolf. Brigitte ultimately fails to cure her sister, resulting in Ginger fully transforming into a werewolf. She accidentally kills Ginger when defending herself.
  • Katharine Isabelle as Ginger Fitzgerald: The older sister of Brigitte Fitzgerald and the daughter of Pamela and Henry Fitzgerald. She was attacked and bitten by the Beast of Bailey Downs who infected her with the curse of lycanthropy. Ginger begins going through erratic changes, and her ferocity became uncontrollable where she murders several people and neighborhood dogs. Ginger at first refused Brigitte's serum cure, wanting to embrace her new sense of power from her werewolf transformation, but eventually acquiesced, albeit too late. Ginger fully transforms into a werewolf, kills Sam, and attacks Brigitte at the family home. She accidentally dies after lunging into Brigitte's knife.
  • Kris Lemche as Sam Miller: A drug dealer who used his work at the County Regreening Programme greenhouse as a double to sell marijuana. Sam accidentally hits the Beast of Bailey Downs with his van, saving the lives of Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald. He suggests Brigitte try a silver piercing cure and tells her about monkshood, a perennial plant that might hold the cure to lycanthropy. Sam prepares the monkshood as a serum and aspirates it into a syringe, which was first used by Brigitte on Jason, seemingly curing him. At the Fitzgerald house, he prepares another dose, but was slaughtered by Ginger (now a werewolf) while trying to administer it.
  • Mimi Rogers as Pamela Fitzgerald: Wife of Henry Fitzgerald and the mother of Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald. She is a happy-go-lucky motherly figure and cared for her daughters, but was often oblivious to her daughter's situations. After discovering Trina's murder, Pamela vows to protect her daughters at all costs.
  • Jesse Moss as Jason McCardy: A student at Bailey Downs High School. He developed an interest in Ginger Fitzgerald, particularly when she began adapting a more aggressive, promiscuous behavior due to her transforming into a werewolf. In her sexual escapade with Jason, Ginger passed the infection onto him. Jason develops violent tendencies and grotesque physical features associated with lycanthropy. Brigitte corners Jason and injects him with a monkshood extract, which appears to cure him.
  • Danielle Hampton as Trina Sinclair: A member of the high school field hockey team and a rival of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald. On two occasions she takes her frustrations out on Brigitte only to find herself on the receiving end of sister Ginger's punches. She accuses the sisters of stealing her dog, but during the confrontation, she accidentally dies from an accident. Ginger and Brigitte bury Trina's body in the back yard, which was later discovered by Pamela Fitzgerald.
  • John Bourgeois as Henry Fitzgerald: The husband of Pamela Fitzgerald and the father of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald. Henry was portrayed as a pushover who doted on his daughters and rarely took on the role of disciplinarian, of which his wife Pamela took the role. Henry is oblivious to his daughter's murder of Trina Fitzgerald.
  • Peter Keleghan as Mr. Wayne: A teacher and guidance counselor at Bailey Downs High School. He was murdered by Ginger who sensed he was threatening Brigitte after he decided to call her sister to his office.
  • Christopher Redman as Ben: A student at Bailey Downs High School and friend of Jason McCardy.
  • Jimmy MacInnis as Tim: A student at Bailey Downs High School and friend of Jason McCardy.
  • Lindsay Leese as Nurse Ferry: The school nurse at Bailey Downs High School. A cheerful and bubbly woman, she invited the Fitzgerald sisters into her office so she could educate them on puberty and the feminine cycle, but fails to address the Fitzgerald sisters' concern about Ginger's unusual menstruation.
  • Wendi Fulford as Ms. Sykes: The Bailey Downs High School gym and field hockey teacher. She breaks apart Ginger from Trina as they get into a heated argument.
  • Ann Baggley as Mother: An unnamed mother who, after finding her toddler playing with a severed paw, discovered that her dog was murdered by the Beast of Bailey Downs.
  • Pak-Kong Ho as Janitor: A custodial staff member of Bailey Downs High School who is seen helping Brigitte Fitzgerald on multiple occasions. He witnessed the murder scene of Mr. Wayne and was killed by Ginger.
  • Bryon Bully as Hockey Kid: Neighborhood kid who was the owner of Baxter, a dog who was killed by Ginger.
  • Steven Taylor as Puppy Kid: A young boy who was terrorized by Jason McCardy and saved by Brigitte Fitzgerald.
  • Nick Nolan as creature and Gingerwolf (Ginger as a werewolf): Nicknamed the Beast of Bailey Downs, the creature that was killing the town's dogs. Nolan also plays as Gingerwolf, who kills Sam and accidentally kills herself after lunging into Brigitte's knife.

Film Interview

Film Interview by Rue Morgue with John Fawcett and Karen Walton after film shooting late 2000
How did the idea for Ginger Snaps come about?

Walton: Basically John Fawcett and I were looking for a project to do together. John wanted to do a horror project and he very much wanted to do a teen girl horror project. I was reluctant to do horror because I'm a character driven writer and I don't find horror - at least the horror I was familiar with at the time - particularly character-driven. We sort of agreed that as long as we could break all the rules and not have a couple of leads running around and hiding and depending on men for all the answers, it might be fun.


How did you decide, from there, that a werewolf film might be the way to go?

Fawcett: I knew that I wanted to make a horror film to begin with, but when you start thinking about horror films, you go, "well, if that's the genre that I want to work in, then you have to figure out what kind of a horror film it is." One of the things that occurred to me was that there weren't very many examples of really good werewolf films. So I kind of thought that that would be something worth tackling. And that also came from the idea that I knew early on that I wanted to do a transformation movie; the idea of someone metaporphosizing into something else. I had written a short script way back about a female biologist who turns into a tree. And that sounds really stupid but it was a really interesting concept to me and there were a lot of things that I liked about it. When I started in on this werewolf film I wanted to make sure that it was different from everything else that I had seen as far as werewolf films go. I was a really big fan of [David Cronenberg's] The Fly and I really liked the long transformation over the course of the movie. It's a biological mutating transformation that is progressive and doesn't occur by the light of the full moon.


Obviously, the werewolf also worked with the metaphorical subtext of the story.

Fawcett: I don't think it's just a metaphor, that's for sure, it is a monster ultimately. We wanted to make a smart horror film, we actually wanted to have a little purpose, we wanted the film to have some meaning. So as a result, I think there are a lot of things in there about adolescence, the idea that Ginger's body is changing, she's developing new appetites, her hormones are running amok. Because it's a long tranformation, it appears that this is a symptom of heightened adolescence but then things start to get even more bizarre than that and it becomes apparent that she is turning into someone else. It is like a biological transformation; it grows from the inside out and where it affects you first is in the way you act before it starts to manifest itself in physical changes. And so that's interesting definitely for an actor and makes it scary on a different level. Ultimately, aside from the fact that there is a monster and a body count, the film is about two sisters who are extremely close and how, at this point in Ginger's life, they are growing apart. That may sound silly but if you took the monster out of the movie that's what you are left with. For a younger sister, change in an older sibling is a really difficult thing to come to grips with. I supposed if it's going to be a smarter film, it will have to be about the characters first and then about the horror. I'm not trying to say that it's any smarter or different than any other werewolf film, but I guess it is different because it's trying to handle the whole myth of the werewolf in a different fashion.


Walton: We wanted to do a creature feature, but there was also a metaphor to be drawn there between girls coming of age and all the atrocities that your body goes through and all the atrocities that a body in theory goes through when you become a werewolf. The werewolf was the most famous transforming phenomenon that we knew about, and it was the best fit to facilitate the story in which you could actually be confused for a minute about whether someone was just becoming normal or was becoming a monster.


The werewolf in particular has a long tradition in literature and in film. Did you draw significantly from that?

Walton: Oh yeah. We went through the movies that existed that we knew about - that convention was explored. And then I did some research in terms of the history of the werewolf and how it was perceived around the world. And that helped me compile the big list of the traditional "everybody knows this" kind of rules and those were the rules we set out to break. An American Werewolf in London was such a cool way to tell the traditional version of the story. We thought to ourselves: now what can we do when it happens to people in a totally different situation? Ginger Snaps is almost a response.


Did you set out to make Ginger Snaps a scary movie?

Fawcett: I'd have to say that I wasn't going out for the cheap scares. I guess I didn't really plan on necessarily making a scary movie as I did want to make a very atmospheric and creepy movie, a movie that gets under your skin. It's not the big startles that are going to have audiences screaming, although I think that there are two or three good ones in Ginger. I feel like I have a pretty darn good attack sequence when Ginger first gets attacked and I am very excited about the climax with the monster in the house and Brigitte basically trying to save her life. Those kind of scares, when they are true and real, they're fabulous, but most of the time you can see them coming and that makes them artificial. It's those kind of things I avoid when I think about the horror films I want to make, even though I like to watch them. What we opted for was an unnerving, creepy, atmospheric piece.


Walton: I think what's scary about it is that you know full well what's going on in people's heads before they do things, and half the time you're hoping they don't do them. You get to know these ladies quite well, and you start to fear for them because you're really hoping that they'll grow up and get past what they'll probably do and move on. There's some pretty horrific body imagery in it; what's happening to Ginger is pretty terrifying, you just don't know what's going to happen next. There's also some gory bits in there but most of the horror is psychological horror; "what we're capable of doing to each other" horror.


John, you mentioned previously that you considered yourself a horror film fan. What kind of horror films did you mean?

Fawcett: One of my earliest film memories was watching Killdozer, which is kind of a ghost film, but I must have been five or six, my memories are really vague of it. I can't find it on videotape anywhere and I'd kill to get a copy of it! More recent films that I found really unsettling were Seven and Dead Ringers. And Dead Ringers, what is that, a horror film? Well, I thought it was a horror film because I walked away from that and was thinking about it for days after - it just felt like I needed to take a shower every ten minutes. If a film can get under your skin like that then that means it's good, it's effective. And that's why the horror genre is so interesting because it is very visceral and you have to have a reaction to it. You can't sit there and just kind of zone out or walk away and say "it's alright."


Horror is seen so much as a ghetto genre, it's hard to get away from that. Do you expect Ginger Snaps will be lumped in with the teenage slasher label or the werewolf label?

Fawcett: It's hard to say how it should be marketed. I know it's not like a teen horror film, but I know that people are going to call it a teen horror film because, after all, what else do you call it? I don't know if it's a good idea to market it as a werewolf film either, because I believe that the reputation of werewolf films is not good. And if I say that I've made a werewolf film, people will just kind of say, [sarcastically], "oh yeah, I really want to run out and see that," because they've seen so many bad werewolf films. So part of me doesn't even want to market it as a werewolf film, but I think you have to; it is after all a monster film, but it's a tricky one.


Walton: I didn't write Ginger Snaps specifically for teens, I wrote it specifically in hindsight about that experience because, again, the film is a little different from the traditional aspects of the genre. It's not for teenagers, it's about being a teenager and because of that the audience will be a little broader.

Copyright RUE MORGUE Magazine. Reprinted with permission

Quotes

  • "I'm a goddamn force of nature. I feel like I could do just about anything." -Ginger
  • "Don't you think our deaths should be a little bit more than cheap entertainment?" -Brigitte
  • "If you don't like your ideas, stop having them." -Ginger to Brigitte
  • "I've got this ache, and I though it was for sex, but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces." -Ginger
  • "No one ever thinks chicks do shit like this. A girl can only be a slut, bitch, tease or the virgin next door. We'll just coast on how the world works." -Ginger
  • "Stay in your own little world Henry. This one just confuses you." -Pamela to Henry Fitzgerald

Trivia

  • Ginger and Brigitte's project involving "mock suicides" was filmed in a young family's house in Canada while the family - including a four-year-old child - was home. Various crew members had to spend the day playing with or otherwise distracting the child so she wouldn't see the gory scenes being filmed outside
  • There are a lot of coincidences surrounding the actresses Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins. They were born in the same hospital, attended the same schools, were represented by the same talent agency and auditioned on the same day.
  • Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins would again play sisters in Another Cinderella Story in 2008, a far more lighthearted film than the Ginger Snaps series. They've also starred in Supernatural and The X-Files in different episodes.

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