Blood, Hair and Pain: Gin­ger Snaps at 20

“You don’t think our deaths should be more than cheap enter­tain­ment?” In a com­plex film that com­bines hor­ror, teen girl pol­i­tics, com­ing-of-age, bod­i­ly trans­for­ma­tions and fam­i­ly bonds, this is the clos­est Gin­ger Snaps gets to a state­ment of intent. Brigitte (Emi­ly Perkins) and Gin­ger Fitzger­ald (Katharine Isabelle) are not here to run an obsta­cle course of sur­vive or die. They are not your usu­al final girls.

Gin­ger Snaps was well-received on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, pre­mier­ing at the Fan­ta­sy Film Fes­ti­val in Munich before play­ing at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val and var­i­ous genre fes­ti­vals. But it fared less suc­cess­ful upon wider release, ini­tial­ly strug­gling to reach its intend­ed audi­ence. Slow­ly, over time, the Fitzger­alds found their crowd.

Released 20 years ago, Gin­ger Snaps is a bloody love let­ter to teenage girls every­where. Root­ed in riot grrrl cul­ture, it falls into a long his­to­ry of pro­gres­sive and trans­gres­sive Cana­di­an hor­ror films: Black Christ­mas laid the blue­print for slash­er films; David Cronenberg’s ear­ly body hor­rors Rabid and Shiv­ers drew con­tro­ver­sy for being pub­licly fund­ed, as would Gin­ger Snaps. In the late 1990s and ear­ly ​’00s, hor­ror films (most­ly from the US), re ener­gised by Wes Craven’s Scream, was all about teenagers – but not the teenage experience.

As well as sub­vert­ing var­i­ous hor­ror con­ven­tions, Gin­ger Snaps also pro­vides a sharp fem­i­nist cri­tique of the genre. Yet behind the clever metaphors, gnarly crea­ture effects and quotable dia­logue is the cap­ti­vat­ing rela­tion­ship between the Fitzger­ald sisters.

The open­ing cred­its are a series of graph­ic faked sui­cide sce­nar­ios (very DeviantArt cir­ca the ear­ly-2000s). The lan­guid theme song could very well be a lone­ly teenager’s bed­room cov­er of a Bauhaus track. This is our intro­duc­tion to Brigitte and Gin­ger, and cru­cial­ly it’s pre­sent­ed from their point of view. Like any teenagers stuck in sub­ur­bia, they hate every­thing around them: it’s not that they have a death wish, more that they will only accept real­i­ty on their terms.

At the start of the film, they are active­ly hid­ing them­selves. They smoke and sulk, hunched over in their over­sized dark hood­ies, try­ing to make them­selves dis­ap­pear. The sui­cide mon­tage is their school project and pits them against not just their class­mates, who already see them as weird, but also their teacher, who seems legit­i­mate­ly afraid of them.

They are foul-mouthed, mor­bid, and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly them­selves. ​“They are dark-mind­ed girls because that’s the kind of girl I thought wasn’t being giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Intel­li­gent, crit­i­cal thinkers who had their own ideas about the world, who had their own lives and their own thoughts on what was accept­able,” screen­writer Karen Wal­ton tells me.

The lan­guage the sis­ters use is aggres­sive, exple­tive-rid­den and faith­ful to how teenagers speak. It’s a con­scious refusal to be sex­u­alised, to be polite, to be nice. ​“Hor­ror is often the return of the repressed, and Gin­ger Snaps is a good exam­ple of repressed sex­u­al ener­gy threat­en­ing main­stream cul­ture,” says Perkins, who plays Brigitte.

This was Walton’s first script, and she had to be con­vinced to write it by the film’s direc­tor, John Faw­cett. They were liv­ing togeth­er at the time, and Faw­cett was fas­ci­nat­ed by the idea of mak­ing a film about trans­for­ma­tion, which nat­u­ral­ly point­ed him towards were­wolves. ​“At first I was resis­tant because they were all so cheesy and stu­pid,” he recalls. ​“There were no good exam­ples, except maybe An Amer­i­can Were­wolf in Lon­don. The more I thought about it, the more I realised there were no female were­wolf [movies] I’d seen.”

The Gin­ger Snaps team were all sub­ur­ban kids. Todd Cher­ni­awsky, the pro­duc­tion design­er, was an old friend of Walton’s; Faw­cett and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Thom Best were from the same area, as was the com­pos­er, Michael Shields. The film is inspired by, and satiris­es, sub­ur­ban life. A neat row of hous­es, white pick­et fences and polite neigh­bours, all drawn from the film­mak­ers’ own expe­ri­ences grow­ing up in small­town Cana­da It’s an envi­ron­ment that is way too dull, too nor­mal, for the Fitzgeralds.

From the out­set, they were always meant to be sis­ters; ini­tial­ly twins. But with twins still wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the super­nat­ur­al (at least on screen), that idea was quick­ly dropped. The rela­tion­ship between them is com­plex, code­pen­dent and ripe for con­flict. ​“There is a pow­er struc­ture here in which Big Sis­ter has pro­tect­ed and cared for Lit­tle Sis­ter, and Lit­tle Sis­ter has grown to depend on that – and so has Big Sis­ter,” says Wal­ton. As Isabelle sees it, Gin­ger Snaps is ​“a beau­ti­ful, trag­ic love story.”

Their moth­er, Pam (Mimi Rogers), is the quin­tes­sen­tial sub­ur­ban mom, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to forge a con­nec­tion with her daugh­ters. ​“Her last great hope for the revival of a mean­ing­ful emo­tion­al con­nec­tion,” says Wal­ton, ​“is some­one get­ting their peri­od.” The oth­er girls in their school are led by pro­to-mean girl Tri­na (Danielle Hamp­ton), the type of pop­u­lar girl who is out­ward­ly nasty. ​“Brigitte feels betrayed by all the female char­ac­ters in the film,” explains Perkins, ​“their alle­giance is to patri­ar­chal val­ues because they are reward­ed for uphold­ing them.” Their inabil­i­ty and unwill­ing­ness to fit into this fixed sys­tem of fem­i­nin­i­ty iso­lates them still fur­ther. The sis­ters stand alone.

Gin­ger and Brigittes’ bed­room is their world, as indeed all teenage bed­rooms are. They live in a base­ment, dank and grim but ide­al for putting as much space between them and the rest of their fam­i­ly. They dec­o­rate the space with shiny pur­ple bead­ed cur­tains, green can­dles and pic­tures of them­selves in death pos­es. ​“I liked the idea that they shared side by side beds as though they were in a hos­pi­tal or an insti­tu­tion togeth­er,” says Faw­cett. The sym­me­try of their two beds visu­al­ly con­veys their togeth­er­ness. ​“Out by 16 or dead on the scene but togeth­er for­ev­er,” is their pact, ​“Unit­ed against life as we know it.” For any goth-punk-emo kid watch­ing Gin­ger Snaps for the first time, the Fitzger­ald sis­ters are aspi­ra­tional weirdos.

When Gin­ger is bit­ten by a wolf on the day of her first peri­od, her trans­for­ma­tion begins. Every­thing she goes through is an exten­sion of puber­ty. Her phys­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion is slow, evolv­ing from con­ceal­able ele­ments like coarse hairs and a tail before her entire body morphs into a grotesque, white-haired were-woman and, even­tu­al­ly, a wolf. Her emo­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion sees her become more sex­u­al­ly aggres­sive, vio­lent, hungry.

Isabelle’s per­for­mance is rem­i­nis­cent of an addict’s with­draw­al symp­toms. She vis­i­bly aches. Her hunger is made hor­rif­ic. She has vio­lent sex with a class­mate, beats up Tri­na, mauls a dog. None of it sati­ates her. The process of becom­ing a were­wolf works per­fect­ly as a vehi­cle to explore phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions of puberty.

While the flashiest moments of the film – even the title – belong to Gin­ger, the secret pro­tag­o­nist of the film is Brigitte. Hers is the biggest evo­lu­tion: more sub­tle, and a com­men­tary on how we per­ceive who the hero of the movie is. Once Ginger’s trans­for­ma­tion into a were­wolf begins, Gin­ger Snaps refo­cus­es on Brigitte cop­ing with the fear of being left behind by some­one she loves, who is (lit­er­al­ly) turn­ing into some­body else.

“My biggest chal­lenge was try­ing to get Brigitte not to appear pas­sive because she was qui­et,” remem­bers Wal­ton. ​“She is actu­al­ly the core strength. She is the unsung hero. And she is tru­ly the pro­tag­o­nist of the movie because when Gin­ger los­es the abil­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between her instincts and her rea­son, Brigitte does not. And it’s her actions that deter­mine how the movie turns out. In my book that makes her the pro­tag­o­nist. I cer­tain­ly wrote her as the hero of the movie.”

When Isabelle first read the script, she was 17 and going through the exact same issues as her char­ac­ter: her body was chang­ing; she was being bul­lied at school and was expe­ri­enc­ing feel­ings of iso­la­tion. She hat­ed the sit­u­a­tion she was in, and says that the film ​“spoke direct­ly to my soul.”

Perkins and Isabelle audi­tioned at the same time. They had known each oth­er their whole lives (Perkins is four years old­er than Isabelle), hav­ing been born in the same hos­pi­tal and going on to attend the same ele­men­tary school. They even had the same agent. Wal­ton, who had not par­tic­i­pat­ed in the audi­tion process, remem­bers the uncan­ny creepi­ness of see­ing these char­ac­ters she had writ­ten, her ​“imag­i­nary best friends who nev­er exist­ed but are aspects of you from that age,” hunched over in a restau­rant, gig­gling away. When they looked up at her, she knew it was Brigitte and Ginger.

Isabelle’s per­for­mance, in par­tic­u­lar, is fero­cious. She is exact­ly the sort of cool, out­spo­ken, brash big sis­ter that would always look out for you. At the time, though, Isabelle was just a teenag­er her­self, and con­vinced that she was screw­ing up the film. After watch­ing the first rough cut of the trail­er halfway through the shoot, she had her first pan­ic attack, locked her­self in her trail­er and couldn’t stop sob­bing. Look­ing back, ​“it’s so obvi­ous how awk­ward and how inse­cure I am,” she says. Mean­while, Perkins, who was 21 at the time of film­ing, drew from her own ado­les­cent expe­ri­ences: ​“I felt that the female body is con­struct­ed as mon­strous by West­ern cul­ture, and I want­ed to tran­scend or delay entrance into a sex­u­al iden­ti­ty for that reason.”

When an infect­ed Gin­ger comes into the high school, she is try­ing on her new skin, ready to be seen. In a sin­gle shot of her walk­ing down a hall­way, Gin­ger under­goes an inter­nal trans­for­ma­tion. But Isabelle was bare­ly hang­ing on. ​“I hate that [scene] because I can tell that I’m bare­ly alive. You only get so many slow-motion hall­way scenes in your life!” The shoot was gru­elling for both her and Perkins, the short pro­duc­tion sched­ule requir­ing them to work 19 – 20 hour days. Added to this, the heavy pros­thet­ics meant that most of Isabelle’s sens­es were tak­en away: ​“I couldn’t see because of the con­tacts; I couldn’t hear because of the latex and the wigs; I couldn’t speak because I had these huge fangs; I couldn’t breathe because I had this latex piece on; I couldn’t touch any­thing because I had these claws on. I’ll nev­er do that amount of pros­thet­ics again.”

Perkins was so drained by the time it came to shoot­ing the final scene that she wor­ried she wouldn’t be able do it. ​“I felt so exhaust­ed by the film­ing, so hol­lowed out,” she reflects, ​“I just want­ed to curl up and go to sleep.” Despite every­thing they endured, both Perkins and Isabelle say they are still immense­ly proud of the film, espe­cial­ly its abil­i­ty to con­nect with people.

The com­par­a­tive phys­i­cal­i­ty of their per­for­mances not only ener­gis­es the film, it also puts the full hor­ror of the female body front and cen­tre. The screen were­wolf has tra­di­tion­al­ly been asso­ci­at­ed with male fig­ures, and a curse that is mys­tic in nature. Gin­ger is not cod­ed as desir­able until she starts under­go­ing her trans­for­ma­tion; Brigitte refus­es to be sex­u­alised at all. As a were­wolf, Gin­ger weaponis­es her new desir­abil­i­ty to lure young men to their deaths. Her body becomes a war­zone to her (“Blood. Hair that wasn’t there before. Pain.”), a desir­able object to oth­ers, and a mon­ster to be vanquished.

No one embod­ies the female mon­ster like a teenage girl. Which is why, a full two decades on, Gin­ger Snaps still packs a punch. It works because it’s root­ed in the female expe­ri­ence. So, as we’re liv­ing through a renais­sance of fem­i­nist hor­ror, it’s only fit­ting that we should pay trib­ute to the Fitzger­ald sis­ters, who set the blue­print for female hor­ror char­ac­ters who are their own mon­ster, their own pro­tag­o­nist and their own sav­iour. Isabelle puts it best: ​“The female expe­ri­ence is a horror.”