Ginger Snaps

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Rating 3½


Directed by John Fawcett

Written by Karen Walton, from a story by Karen Walton and John Fawcett

Starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche, Mimi Rogers, John Bourgeois, Jesse Moss, Danielle Hampton, Pak-Kwong Ho and Peter Keleghan


“Out by sixteen or dead on the scene, but together forever... United against life as we know it.”

Two sisters, Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins), aged nearly 16 and just 15 respectively, rebel against the mundane conformity of their dull and faceless suburban lives by cultivating a morbid fascination with death, staging a number of fake suicides, all of them horrific in nature, and photographing the results for a school project. Both sisters have so far not started menstruation, which they consider to be a badge of honour. However, when Ginger is savagely attacked on the night of a full moon by a werewolf, which is then killed when it is hit with force by a van driven by the local drug dealer Sam (Kris Lemche), everything begins to change.

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“Just so you know... the words “just” and “cramps”, they don’t go together!”

This strange darkly comic low-budget independent Canadian werewolf film was first shown at the Toronto Film Festival in 2000, before receiving a theatrical release in Canada the following year. It had, if the entry at Wikipedia is to be believed, already been the subject of an unusual degree of adverse media attention in Canada during the casting process as a result of the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in April 1999.

The werewolf theme is a metaphor for puberty and menstruation, the hormonal sexuality of teenagers and the different attitudes of and towards teenage boys and teenage girls. In many ways it bears some comparison to the 1984 Neil Jordan film ‘The Company of Wolves’, based on Angela Carter’s short story of the same name. However, many critics seem to have identified a stylistic link to David Cronenberg, making the point that Cronenberg, like John Fawcett, the director here, is Canadian.

For about the first hour or so this film is quite brilliant, with a rapier-sharp script and fabulous performances by the two leads, as well as a great turn by Mimi Rogers, playing their equally quirky mother Pamela. After that it does start to gradually rather lose its way and ultimately it is simply too long. Fifteen minutes could easily have been shaved off the running time. This is a shame, because it slightly spoils what might otherwise have been a near-classic film. Having said that, I think it still deserves its cult reputation.

‘Ginger Snaps’ has an 89% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 47 reviews. The production budget is quoted at Wikipedia to have been CAN$4.8 million. The film had a virtually non-existent theatrical run in the U.S., grossing just $2,500 at the box office. However, two more films followed; ‘Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed’, which I like very much, and ‘Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning’, a decent prequel, both with Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle reprising their roles. Although Perkins plays the younger of the two sisters, she is actually four and a half years older than Isabelle.

Kris Lemche played God in the wonderful ‘Joan of Arcadia’.

Review posted 8 April 2009



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Insomnia (2002)

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WARNING: Minor spoilers in the film description

Rating 3½


Directed by Christopher Nolan

Written by Hillary Seitz, based on the film written by Nicolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg

Starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan, Maura Tierney, Pail Dooley, Fred Dugger, Jonathan Jackson, Crystal Lowe and Katharine Isabelle


Two homicide detectives from Los Angeles, Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), are sent to a small fishing town in Alaska to assist with the investigation following the murder of a teenage girl, Kay Connell (Crystal Lowe). The underlying motivation for sending them is take them out of the line of fire during an internal affairs investigation of their department. They are met by local police officer Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), who has a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the cases of Dormer, a veteran detective who is revered within the police force. Dormer is unable to sleep in the perpetual daylight of the Alaskan summer and his mood darkens when Eckhart tells him he plans to give evidence to Internal Affairs in exchange for immunity. When Dormer shoots his partner in the chest during a bungled attempt to capture the killer, he claims that the shooting was carried out by the murder suspect, local crime thriller writer Walter Finch (Robin Williams). However, Finch witnessed the shooting and a complex game of psychological cat and mouse now ensues between the two.

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This was Christopher Nolan’s follow-up film to the critically acclaimed ‘Momento’. The executive producers were George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh (the director of ‘sex, lies & videotape’, ‘Erin Brockovich’ and others). Released into cinemas in 2002, ‘Insomnia’ was a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film. Although the film has a 92% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 166 reviews, I clearly recall generally rather negative reviews at the time from British film critics. It was suggested that the film was heavy-handed and too routinely conventional, a disappointing follow-up to its left-of-centre predecessor. Undoubtedly this initial reaction was influenced by Nolan working within the mainstream Hollywood studio system with a big production budget – and probably because the film was a remake. By the time the film arrived on DVD, critical reaction to it had altered considerably, which simply attests to the subjective nature of such reviews.

I cannot compare the film to the original, which I have not as yet seen, but it is very effectively staged and put together. The setting is perfect, although when I first watched it at the time of its cinema release I could not stop myself from making the link to the quirky American television series ‘Northern Exposure’. The performances are excellent. Al Pacino, who was starting to become prone to Jack Nicholson-style barnstorming and scenery chewing during this period, gives one of his quieter performances – a blessed relief, having shouted his way through ‘The Devil’s Advocate’ just a few years earlier. Hilary Swank, three years on from her first Academy Award and two years away from her second one, is very good in a role that necessarily plays second-fiddle to the two male leads. The real star here, though, is Robin Williams, brilliantly playing against type, just as he would do again that same year in the excellent ‘One Hour Photo’.

Maura Tierney, who played Abby Lockhart for ten years in the long-running hospital drama ‘ER’, is amongst the supporting cast. The Canadian actress Katharine Isabelle plays Tanya Francke, the less-than-reliable best friend of the murder victim. Two years earlier, Isabelle was one of the co-leads in the terrific Canadian werewolf film ‘Ginger Snaps’. Her co-star from that film, Emily Perkins, has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it walk-on role here.

‘Insomnia’ is an effective thriller with an interesting slant on what would otherwise have been a mundane story. It makes good use of the icy setting in which the sun never sets and the internal conflicts that eat away at Dormer, a scrupulously honest cop gone bad with good intent, is nicely done. It is, though, best not to think too hard about the plot, because holes do soon start to appear it.

The film had a production budget of $46 million and grossed just under $114 million at the box office. The two films Christopher Nolan made prior to this, ‘Momento’ and ‘Following’, had production budgets of $9 million and $6,000 respectively.

Review posted 6 April 2009



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Ginger Snaps Unleashed

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Rating 3½


Directed by Brett Sullivan

Written by Karen Walton and Megan Martin

Starring Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Janet Kidder, Tatiana Maslany and Eric Johnson


This is the second of the three ‘Ginger Snaps’ films, the Canadian horror franchise that began with one of the most original (if perhaps flawed) horror films of recent years.

‘Ginger Snaps Unleashed’ picks up the story virtually at the point the first film ended, although this time it concentrates on the younger sister Brigitte, played by the excellent Emily Perkins. Ginger is more of a peripheral character, coming to her in a series of waking dreams and hallucinations.

Brigitte is sent to a drug rehabilitation hospital for teenage girls, where she forms a bond with a strange younger girl called Ghost (rather wonderfully played by Tatiana Maslany, who features in the forthcoming George A Romero film ‘Diary Of The Dead’).

Whereas the first film was a metaphor for puberty and menstruation and the physical and psychological complexities that go with it, this time around drug addiction and attitudes towards teenage girls who do not conform to the required norms of patriarchal society is the subtext behind the werewolf horror plot.

There are a couple of scenes I can’t work out the purpose of. The first involves group masturbation as a form of therapy and the second sees an orderly injecting Brigitte’s drug of choice apparently into her vagina. Those rather odd scenes aside, I think this is a great sequel. It doesn’t have the same impact as the original film, but it retains a degree of originality.



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