The Horror of ‘the Curse’ in GINGER SNAPS (2000)

Werewolf movies are often defined by their transformation sequences. They can live and die in those handful of seconds when the human form is shed and an otherworldly monstrosity springs forth, winning or losing viewers on the merits of just how believable the creators made the unbelievable out to be.

It’s a subgenre with fewer outings than its monster brethren, perhaps because of the aforementioned pressure regarding the effects. Vampires are easy: throw in some fangs, a bit of sallow skin, and a whole lot of fake blood and you’ve got yourself an undead bloodsucker. Zombies can be trickier, but they’re often bolstered by scope and far-reaching character dynamics. Put simply, the werewolf is tough to do well, and, as the 90s came to a close, was an all too underutilized horror fiend.

What makes Ginger Snaps (2000) so effective as a werewolf movie is not simply its dedication to practically realizing its horrors, but its aim to reimagine lycanthropy as a metaphor for the plight of the young woman, providing a female perspective in a genre that desperately needed it (and still does). Rather than focusing on the same werewolf mythos that had been ever-present in most every wolf-man entry that preceded it, Ginger Snaps does away with a focus on the full moon. Instead, the film weaves the transformation into what it refers to as “the curse” that every adolescent woman faces along with the internal and external consequences associated with it.

Aside from the effects, it’s the strength of the protagonists that makes the terror so substantial. Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle are electric onscreen as Brigitte and Ginger. Their relationship is raw, messy, and bound by powerful love. The two bleed authenticity and from the moment Ginger is first attacked to the film’s brutal, bloody climax, the visceral emotional through-line shared between them is utterly captivating, werewolves aside.

Even in the earliest drafts, Karen Walton’s script approaches the werewolf movie from a completely different point of view, offering an identifiable reality for young women as well as an underserved perspective. Initially adverse to the idea as well as horror in general, Walton set out to write against what she had seen in the past, subverting common female teenage tropes and creating a conceivable story that offered valuable insight into the violent, sexual world that is thrust upon young women and the destruction that sort of curse is capable of causing.

This point of view inks a path that runs the gamut of youthful emotions, careening fiercely from fear and excitement to lust and repulsion and never deviating from the all-encompassing pull of love’s potent grasp. Add to this a production built around Paul Jones’ well designed and executed practical effects and director John Fawcett’s corresponding vision and Ginger Snaps emerges as one of the werewolf genre’s most impressive turns. There are a multitude of sequences that balance the creature, the gore and the overwhelming emotional strength of the narrative, but it’s when Ginger is attacked early in the film that all of those elements first coalesce.

A savage and ferocious scene, Ginger’s attack comes only moments after she begins her first menstrual cycle, or curse, as she calls it, bringing her into societal womanhood only to be met with the assault of a beast’s brutal hunger for flesh. Designed to feel like a rape, this scene interlaces the carnality inherent within humanity and what it has the potential to transform into. Brought to life with impressive prosthetics, stunt work, performances, and blocking, the scene is as disturbing as it is exciting, ushering the film forward into the core plot with an unrelenting emotional intensity that never fades.

The sequence is the perfect example of what makes the average werewolf movie work so well, while also translating those tropes into something far more meaningful. Metamorphosis, after all, is not as unbelievable as it might seem, just ask a teenager.

THE SCENE

Brigitte and Ginger find a partially devoured dog in the park. They examine it and discover the body is still warm. Brigitte points out that some of the blood got on Ginger’s leg, but Ginger responds that she “got the curse”. They hear something in the woods and go to investigate. Automatic lights click on attached to nearby houses and suddenly a creature leaps on top of Ginger. The beast tears at her body as Ginger screams. Brigitte swings her bag at the thing, attempting to deter it and finally Ginger manages to get away. Bloodied and beaten, Brigitte helps Ginger escape the woods, coming out in the middle of a road. The creature closes in but is struck by a van just before it can reach the girls.

THE SCRIPT

Excerpt taken from the script ‘Ginger Snaps’ written by Karen Walton.

THE SCREEN

While both the script and the finished film find Brigitte and Ginger coming upon the bloody remains of a local dog, the script lingers more in that moment, emphasizing the girl’s brazenness and the grotesquery of the situation. On the page, the girls are walking through a neighbor’s yard and Ginger steps on something that make an evil squeeshy sound. The sound, as it turns out, belongs to a long, ropy intestine that she skids and falls on. Everything from the underlined text to the childlike phonetic spelling of the disturbing event points to the headspace the girls are in and their general ambivalence to what would normally be considered stomach churning.

In the film, the girls are walking through the park. Rather than comically slipping on the poor creature’s innards, they merely come upon it, staring down with unpleasant looks on their faces. A high angle shot from the perspective of the body depicts their conversation about what to do and how they might be able to use the corpse in a planned prank against a local girl that’s been bullying them.

In the script, the intestines lead the girls to the dog’s body. Brigitte suggests they could take it home and do an autopsy, while Ginger decides to dispose of it in a dumpster so as not to traumatize the kiddies. There’s a little more back and forth between them on the page as they carry the dog to the dumpster, whereas onscreen the moment culminates quickly. In the film, Brigitte attempts to pick up the body only to have the leg she grabbed detach. It’s then that she notices blood on Ginger’s leg and says simply, “you got some on you”.

In the script, Ginger notices the blood before Brigitte, dusting herself off after climbing into the dumpster to conceal the dog’s body:

Ginger wipes at the blood with her hand. More appears. She lifts up the hem of her skirt. Her face falls. She looks around. She slips her fingers up to her crotch. Her hand comes out bloody.

Given that she had just emerged from a dumpster, the audaciousness is amplified in a way that is less present onscreen. In the film, Ginger glances down in light of Brigitte’s comment and eyes the trail of blood running down her leg. She pulls up her skirt and with a sense of seriousness says the scripted, “Bee, I just got the curse.” The shot then focuses on Brigitte as Ginger paces in the background, waxing annoyed about her predicament. Despite the curse, from Brigitte’s perspective, she is now the outsider in the equation.

In the script, Ginger wiggles her wet fingers at [Brigitte] and says, “We gotta go home”. The two turn to leave but Brigitte’s clothing gets stuck on a plank with a nail sticking out of the dumpster. After freeing herself and then being startled by a garage’s motion-sensitive security lamp a few homes down, Brigitte dips a hand back into the dumpster for the plank with the nail. After this, they continue walking down the lane.

The film streamlines the sequence, getting down to brass tax with fervent immediacy. Brigitte turns, the yellowish, florescent haze of nighttime in suburbia casting shadows on her face through the trees. She eyes a piece of playground equipment, a white horse propped up on a giant spring as it sways gently from side to side in the breezeless night. The unsettling calm is disrupted seconds later by a flash of dark fur and a monstrous growl as something dives from the darkness and tackles Ginger.

Brigitte falls in the commotion and quickly regains her footing, looking desperately in every direction for some sign of Ginger. A series of wide shots of trees and the return of the eerie silence of the night indicates that Ginger is gone. Brigette calls for her again and again until finally she hears the distant screams of her sister echoing from in the woods. Brigitte hurries into the trees without a second though, captured by shaky handheld cinematography and POV shots that encapsulate the chaos of the situation.

It’s here that a bit of the original script shows back up in the action when Brigitte pauses as the automatic lights on several nearby houses begin to illuminate in succession. By placing this idea in the middle of a chase sequence, the film expertly keeps the pacing in flux, refusing to let the viewer become comfortable in their certainty regarding what they’re about to see. The lights turn off and Brigitte pauses a moment more only to be tackled once again by something emerging speedily from the darkness, only this time it’s her sister.

On the page, there is far more build-up to the attack. As the two girls walk, they begin to pick up speed before coming to the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. Something behind them knocks an empty trash can over and Ginger stops to confront what she perceives to be their stalker. Mouthing off to the darkness, Ginger exclaims, “All right you ass—” only to be cut off by a roaring blur of speeding fur and teeth and claws. Essentially the same on the page as it appears on the screen, part of what makes the threat so terrifying is its ambiguity under the veil of darkness: We cannot see it as a whole, we can’t make out what it is. It’s big, heavy and raging.

On the page, there is no chase. The attack happens right then and there in the strip mall parking light. This aligns fairly closely with what occurs after Brigitte again finds her sister in the woods. Lying on the ground, Ginger on top, something again grabs hold of her and drags her away. She slides into the brush, sweaty, bloody and screaming. The thing roars. In a series of quick shots, the viewer finally begins to get a concrete sense of what it is she’s facing.

The wolf-like monster is mounted on top of Ginger, mauling her. Its claws shred her skin. It’s long, extended jaws snap down into the flesh of her torso. Ginger screams louder and louder, clamoring to get away but overpowered by the roaring thing tearing into her. Brigitte watches helplessly in terror and, after a moment, gains the wherewithal to intervene. She swings her bag at the monster’s head, screaming for it to stop. The beast ignores her, shaking Ginger’s body around in its jaws until finally she connects in such a way that causes it to drop its prey. She hits it again and her camera snaps a photo, momentarily blinding the beast just before it flings Brigitte backward several yards into the brush.

On the page, the scene is not nearly as graphic or, in some ways, as traumatizing. After being tackled, Ginger raises her arms and covers her head before the thing grabs her and shakes the living daylights out of her. Then, Brigitte swings the plank and brings it down hard on the thing. As in the film, the camera goes off revealing a horrible set of jaws and one golden eye before a third hit causes the thing to back off. Cautious of the plank, the creature skitters before her and the two run like hell for a main thorough-way ahead.

Onscreen the girls also run, pushing their way through the woods until they burst out onto a road. Ginger falls, covered in blood and in excruciating pain, before being picked back up and rushed across the street without looking for traffic. A van speeds toward them, honking and swerving just as the creature emerges from the trees in their wake. The beast pauses, eyeing the van as it cascades toward it. The werewolf explodes in a bloody mess as the van barrels down upon it. Ginger and Brigitte watch in horror before hurrying off in the darkness.

The scripted scene ends in a similar way, finding a bit more excitement on the road as the girls sail between moving cars and the thing burns behind them.  After just barely being missed by an oncoming truck, they crash to the sidewalk, spilling over one another. The creature pursues and, Then a sickening thud. A bloody grill and a wet trail of gore leading to a mangled furry mass amount to almost exactly what is seen onscreen.

Both versions of the sequence reach the same conclusion. Still, what appears onscreen has a more streamlined approach while maintaining a sense of mounting tension throughout. The attack is more brutal and invasive and, while painful to watch, more acutely realizes the predatory horrors surrounding the different curses the overall film is concerned with.

THE BLOODY CONCLUSION

“I wanted to do a monster that represented what you become when you become all about destruction,” screenwriter Karen Walton said in her commentary track for Ginger Snaps, “when your self-destruction starts to affect others, when your need to tear everything around you to pieces is manifested as animal… what would that look like?”

When I think of werewolf movies, I think about the big transformation sequences. From The Wolfman (1941) to An American Werewolf in London (1981) and beyond, it’s a subgenre defined by the execution of its effects. Still, those who dive in a bit deeper will find stories of complex duality, exploring the dichotomy that exists in every soul between carnal desire and moral goodness.

Ginger Snaps reframes those thematics, offering a feminine viewpoint that probes the real-life horrors of growing up as a young woman in a male-dominated, sexualized world. As screenwriter Karen Walton put it in the making-of feature Ginger Snaps: Blood, teeth and Fur, she wanted to, “construct characters that reflected an experience that was more familiar to most young women… it was about portraying women whose points of view I understood.”

This shift in perspective is apparent in every frame but comes to screaming life the moment Ginger receives the curse. The scene is perfectly balanced and paced, offering terror and thoughtful commentary in equal measure, all executed with technical precision. Outside of the writing and conceptualization, the attack on Ginger was a complex mix of stunt work and Paul Jones’ practical effects. In his commentary, director John Fawcett described how the production team pulled it off:

“It’s a stunt person in a rig suspended on her back in the air and she’s cabled from her shoulders and from her hips so that we can reel her quickly back and forth, and drop her quickly up and down. Of course, we just attached the monster’s head to her body, so the guy in the suit there has to kind of just go wherever she’s going. It was a very grueling process…”

The scene is a testament to the power of the werewolf film and the genre when approached in a unique way. Dealing with difficult, heady thematics, Karen Walton and John Fawcett crafted a sequence about a male beast attacking a young girl on the cusp of womanhood that goes on to inform the remainder of the feature’s runtime. As Karen Walton framed it in her commentary track, “sexual violence is a part of every woman’s life, of course, but it was particularly interesting to me to look at the creature as not only what anybody could become if they took their most basic lustful impulses to the extreme but also to start at the idea of invasion.”

Transformation is a bloody, painful process. The best werewolf films manage to capture that idea in a very real, human way that stands apart from all of the bloody deaths and midnight moon-howling sessions. And for all of its talk of curses and lycanthropy, there are few films as real and human as those which hold up a mirror to humanity and ask us to have a look, especially when the visage staring back at us is anything but our own.

That’s what I’ll remember Ginger Snaps for. All of the great transformation sequences aside, I can’t think of a better metamorphosis than that.