Recencies van critici

The puberty metaphor is unsubtle and familiar from horror films with a male perspective, but this 2000 Canadian feature from screenwriter Karen Walton and director John Fawcett carves out a new space for girls in the genre, smashing its long-standing binary of amoral sluts and virginal "last girls" for more complex protagonists who talk and act like real teenagers. . . . The sharp feminist narrative makes up for the admirable but underwhelming werewolf makeup and other practical effects.

Ginger Snaps is perhaps the only teen horror film to connect the idea of werewolves to the menstrual cycle. While other films, such as Teen Wolf (1985) and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) use lycanthropy as a metaphor for growing up, they do not reflect the feminine experience. This is a film that tackles the unique struggles of being a teenage girl, and the particular social concerns that emerge with a woman's transforming body.

Fawcett and Walton have transcended their various fealties to the ghosts of horror films' past and have arrived at a place that's bracingly vulnerable and dangerous. Ginger Snaps is a legitimately great teen tragedy that exposes its protagonists' faux-nihilism for what it truly is: easy.

Part of the brilliance here is that a cheesy horror film is all Ginger Snaps aspires to be... In many ways, [it] creates meaning in the same way as its B-movie fellows: through the strict use of metaphor. We can think of horror as a genre incarnating unspoken fears — of disease, of sex, of technology — as monsters; revealing a fear and then battling it brings about a kind of catharsis, maybe.