Running time: 108 min

Cast: Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle 

In RL Stevenson's tale of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the character of Utterson describes Hyde in these words, "I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why...he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point.  He's an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way." In the visual medium of course we can rarely have it that way, so cinematic Hydes have always come with easily describable deformities and abnormalities, and one of the more popular variations in film of this theme (mixed with some European folklore) is that of the Werewolf. Shuttling between the human, usually repressed side and the hot-blooded animal side, the Werewolf is, as Stephen King postulates in his delightful chronicle Danse Macabre, a representation of the conflict between the orderly Apollonian and wanton Dionysian sides of human nature.

Pompous bullshit aside, the archetype Werewolf film is about an otherwise introverted and nondescript protagonist finding bloody release once the fur rises. 2000's Ginger Snaps is another effort that explores this theme. To make things more interesting, Ginger Snaps has two protagonists, Ginger and Brigitte, who with their intense exclusion of the rest of the world and tendency towards unusual activities like making a high school project composed of mock suicide tableaux, handsomely earn their reputation as the prominent weirdos on campus. Also, they're both running rather late to puberty. The main story picks off when the older Ginger, a little after her first period, is attacked by a werewolf. This sparks of a series of changes,  both physical and psychological, which upsets the emotional equation of the nerdy sisters and sets the further course of increasingly violent events.

In several online reviews including my friend Richard Scheib's, Ginger Snaps comes highly recommended, praised for its intermingling of the themes of werewolves and difficult female adolescence. Apart from the gender, the theme is not particularly novel and in the early parts I was beginning to consider the film as a decent effort, but with some noticeably lazy plot contrivance (a drug-dealer who is also an expert on Werewolf lore) and weighed down by over-hype. But then it turned out to have a strong middle, with some really clever black comedy drawn from those elements. Ginger being presented with a crimson sauce dripping cake on her first period, or Brigitte diverting her stereotype suburban sitcom mother (Mimi Rogers, hilariously good) from noticing a corpse in the freezer with , "Mum, what do boys WANT?" are but a couple out of several moments that elicited hearty chuckles from me. It is also admirable that an emotional bond is depicted between the sisters without resorting to the usual mush. Emily Perkins gives a credible and sympathetic performance as the intensely nerdy Brigitte while Katharine Isabelle is decent, if underwhelming, as Ginger.

The last part of the film with its change of tone to pure horror, I found a bit of a chore to get through; nothing particularly bad here, and the visuals are actually pretty effective, but following the excellent morbid humor before this, it is something of a disappointment. The lack of a consistent tone in the film is one of its noticeable flaws, but the individual parts are good enough to warrant the attention of genre fans.