For the third (and final) film in the Ginger Snaps series, they went back to the beginning. Or rather the beginning of the beginning. Or something. What I’m saying is they made a prequel.
Set in 1815, this film follows two sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabel), as they battle werewolves and try to keep Ginger from turning into one after she’s been bitten.
If you’ll remember, that is exactly the plot of the original film, even down to the same actresses playing characters with the same names and (more or less) the same personalities.
Instead of being two modern girls living through the hell of high school and being obsessed with death, these sisters have survived a terrible accident that killed their parents and everyone else in their party while exploring the great wilderness.
They come upon a nearly abandoned fort filled with suspicious characters. The people inside have been waiting for a party to return with food and supplies, but they are two months late. Wolf-like creatures have been attacking the fort regularly.
One night Ginger discovers a strange, deformed boy hidden in a room. The boy bites her. It will come as no surprise to learn the boy was bitten by a werewolf and is starting to turn. Soon enough Ginger will start to turn as well.
To keep that from happening, she needs to kill the boy. But her father is none too keen on that happening, and killing a child proves a bit difficult for her as well.
The original Ginger Snaps was a terrific little horror film that blended the smart high school satire of Heathers with a good dash of bloody horror. This third entry feels like they just took the same concept and threw it into a different time period. The sisters act just like they do in the original film, down to the way they talk (which is rather off-putting since it takes place in the 1800s). There also isn’t much satire to it. It really doesn’t feel like they took the time to think through the earlier time period but needed it to be a sequel since (spoilers for the previous films) Ginger is dead and Brigitte is a full-fledged werewolf.
The end result isn’t terrible. It is a perfectly serviceable horror film. It just pales in comparison with the first one.
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