#22 - Ginger Snaps (2000)
Ginger and Brigitte, two death-obsessed teenage sisters, are inseparable from each other but are total outcasts at school. For fun, they enjoy staging and photographing their own deaths. When they are attacked by a vicious beast in the woods one night, Ginger is mauled and almost killed, but Brigitte is shocked to see that her wounds have already started to heal by the time they get home. Ginger's body begins to go through some changes - terrible cramps and pains, mood swings, bloody discharges, hair in new places - that seem to be tied to a monthly cycle. She has received the most terrible of curses - puberty. Oh, and lycanthropy.
This is a really great film, for two reasons. First, as far as monster movies go, there just aren't a ton of great werewolf films out there. I mean, there are dozens of great films about zombies, ghosts, demons, and vampires, but I'm not sure I could name 10 werewolf movies that are even worth watching. My all-time favorite is still An American Werewolf in London, but this one is fantastic and I think it falls only slightly short of that film. Second, Ginger Snaps is also something even rarer than a good werewolf film - it's a feminist horror film.
Horror is, unfortunately, generally a pretty misogynistic genre. To quote Ginger in this film, "A girl can only be a slut, a bitch, a tease, or the virgin next door." It's rare to find a female lead that isn't a victim, and even when a "final girl" manages to beat the killer (who is always male), it is often done in some passive way - holding out until help arrives, through sheer luck, etc. Here we have not only strong female leads and a strong female supporting cast, but a story that directly addresses female puberty and sexual maturity. Of course these two things do not happen simultaneously in real life, but within the context of the werewolf metaphor it makes sense that the girls face both physical and psychological changes at the same time.
It can be (and has been) argued that equating menstruation and female sexuality with turning into a monster is the opposite of a feminist message, but I think that this misses the point. Ginger, who already had some extremely morbid and violent tendencies to begin with, does end up a monster, but it is her irresponsible behavior and abuses of sex/power that are the main cause of this. Brigitte, on the other hand, who is really the protagonist of the film, actively rejects Ginger as a role model - even after being exposed herself, she stays true to who she is.
While the feminist angle is not perfectly clear-cut (this is, after all a werewolf horror film first and foremost), the fact that these issues are addressed at all makes this film stand out from the majority of horror cinema. If nothing else, it features a female character filling a traditionally male role, and she acts entirely through her own agency.
Very highly recommended - one of my new favorite werewolf movies.
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