Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

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Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

May 20th 2009 02:35

I'll try to keep this brief. You might feel little pain. I have to be cruel to be kind. Ginger Snaps is a great little werewolf flick; a distinctly feminine edge with a smart sense of humour, and brutal to boot. Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed was a solid sequel; a little more wayward, more introspective, more perverse, but it wasn’t as savage, or as frightening, or as clever, as the first movie.

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) was shot back-to-back with Unleashed (and was released straight-to-DVD), but it pales in comparison. In fact it’s down right anemic, which is a shame, since Katherine Isabelle’s character of Ginger Fitzgerald returns from the sidelines, and she’s a delightfully cynical and feisty wench.

Ginger Snaps Back Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle

Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) in shock

Written - once again - by a woman, Christina Ray, but this time in collaboration with Stephen Massicotte, and directed by Grant Harvey, Ginger Snaps Back does indeed go back to the beginning, the origins of the Fitzgerald sisters to be precise, and tells the tale of how they came to be infected with the lycanthropic curse which was apparently spreading across frontier Canada in the early 19th Century.

Wallace (Tom McManus) is also in despair

Ginger and her slightly younger sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) have been orphaned, their parents drowned, and the two teenage girls are riding by horseback through the wilderness. They come across a Native American seer, but lose their horse to fear. She foresees their fate. A handsome American Indian comes to their aid, after Brigitte gets her foot caught in a bear trap, and takes them to the Northern Legion Trader’s fort, which is under siege from Wendigos (American Indian werewolf myth).

While Finn (Brendan Fletcher) is in agony

Not only are the Trading Company numbers steadily dwindling, but Ginger and Brigitte are seen as their own kind of curse by the mean-spirited men. Ginger is bitten by a disfigured juvenile kept being kept captive. Now time is running out for the two sisters. Who will ultimately come between them; the Wendigo? The paranoid Traders? Or will the curse decide their fate?

Beware the children of the night ...er, wrong movie

The main problem with Ginger Snaps Back is that it’s just not that interesting a story. The characters are all caricatures and there is no real drama or intrigue. For the most part, and this is a problem with the dialogue as well as the character direction, it seems like the Fitzgerald sisters are exactly the same as the sisters from the first movie, only this time they’re donning bad wigs and period costume and they’re running around the woods getting their long dresses dirty.

Ginger makes a grand entrance

I realise of course that the narrative conceit is that the sisters in Ginger Snaps Back are more than likely the same sisters from the first movie that have an immortal bond (we see them mix blood at the end of Ginger Snaps Back), but this is tenuous at best, since they’re not orphans in the first movie, and Brigitte doesn’t start to transform until the second movie.

Brigitte has to fend for herself

Another hairy problem I have is the werewolves themselves. You see too much of them in this third movie, and they just aren’t that convincing. The gore effects are decent (KNB Group are on board once again), but the Wendigos look like big rubbery hairballs with a snout. Amusingly, it had the same effect on me as when I first saw Aliens (1986). The fact that there were was an overkill of them instantly reduced the element of fear I had, which was so much more intense when there was just one creeping around.

Brigitte hallucinates after taking an Indian potion

Katherine Isabelle appears to be sleep-walking, and I have to say Ginger as ghoulish were-princess bordered on risible, while Emily Perkins has the aghast look down to a fine art. Brendan Fletcher returns (he played the doomed librarian from Unleashed) and suffers dreadfully at the mercy of leeches and a shotgun. Tom McManus and Hugh Dillon hold their own as the head Trader and his right-hand man, respectively.

Ginger Snaps Back falls over, flat on its snout. But there is one stand-out sequence: Brigitte is coerced into drinking an Indian potion and she has a hallucinogenic vision which is beautifully filmed. But really, it's only that the Fitzgerald sisters were such fascinating creatures in the first place that the movie is bearable. Shame the origins of the sister’s lupine legacy proved to be so dull and matted.

NB: The movie was retitled Hellwolf: You Will Be Eaten Alive in the Phillipines. Now that’s a title!

Here's the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

7 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

May 20th 2009 12:54

Ah another prequel is added to the Hollywood stable.

I get the impression that I am seeing The Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Grrrr.

Comment by JohnDoe

May 20th 2009 17:34

Film & TV on DVD

hi Bryn,

I had a huge problem with some of the ludicrous origins established in this one. Worse it was downright boring and predictable where there was at least opportunity for storytelling flair and rewriting mythology.

Comment by Bryn

May 20th 2009 22:48

Horrorphile

Damo, Brotherhood was just as flabby ...

JD, yup, yup, yup.

Comment by Damo

May 20th 2009 23:54

Bryn
You just scared me off with one word. "Flabby"

Brotherhood had a terrible boredom factor to it. Whereas it it should have had at least 30-40 minutes edited to make it a good film.

Comment by Bryn

May 21st 2009 00:29

Horrorphile

Damo, you hit the hairy nail on the head there. I was very disappointed by Brotherhood of the Wolf. Utter tedium for the most part. It should've been a great period werewolf movie, it certainly had the budget for it!

Comment by Damo

May 21st 2009 07:11

Bryn

The other way to wreck a movie with great potential is to try to be too many movies at once. That is why I find a lot of Bollywood films unwatchable.