Everything is dead. A stilled suburb under ominous skies, there is absolute immobility inGinger Snaps’ opening shot. Looking in closely, the camera shows some domestic outdoor activities of this dormant neighbourhood: a woman raking the leaves, her toddler in a sandbox, kids playing street hockey in a cul-de-sac – a fleeting indication of Canadian identity. The tot finds a paw in his sandbox. To her horror, his mother discovers the bloodied, severed limb is part of what is left of the family’s pet, Baxter, torn to shreds by “the beast of Bailey Downs,” a large wolf believed to be...

The genesis ofGinger Snapspoints to a cluster of interwoven relations, skills, and interests that brings into focus the fact thatGinger Snapswas very much a collaborative effort. The initiative for the film came from John Fawcett, admirer of monster movies and fan of the films of David Cronenberg, who found in the New Zealand filmHeavenly Creatures(Jackson, 1994) inspiration to start thinking about a story that would explore the relationship between two female protagonists in the face of horrific events. Friends of friends brought Fawcett in contact with writer Karen Walton. The two got on well...

Ginger Snapsdid not “happen” until after a small but heated controversy over casting. Six prominent casting directors of Toronto who preferred to remain anonymous announced via the media that they were going to boycottGinger Snaps.¹ They claimed to be worried about supporting a film featuring the murder of high school students exactly at a time when both the United States and Canada were in the grip of a media frenzy about deadly shootings on high school campuses in Littleton, Colorado (the Columbine shooting) and Taber, Alberta (the W.R. Myers High shooting). Articles about the boycott in the early...

We now come to the core ofGinger Snaps, the point in its meaning where Ginger and Brigitte’s suicidal rebellion against suburban conformity and the hormonal hell of high school, puberty’s antipathy towards cleanliness, the horror of the transformation into a beast, and the pressure on the girls’ intimate bond intersect to form acause, and where the film’s ideological identity emerges.

“One of the most frightening things for the control-freak Canadian psyche to deal with,” writes Katherine Monk ofGinger Snaps, “is that sex equals a complete lack of control.”¹ Monk’s observation gives a neat insight into the claim,...

Ginger Snapshas built up a firm following over the span of just over a decade to become a fan favourite that is now, at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, a recurrent part of the horror cult canon.Ginger Snapswas first presented to the world at the American Film Market of February 2000, where it was listed as one of Lions Gate’s product highlights.VarietydescribedGinger Snapsat the time as a “modern werewolf tale [in which] a teenage girl must decide between saving herself or joining her sister in an otherworldly existence.”...

Usually, the impact of horror films dwindles as time passes. As fandom grows, fans form less of a “pack.” Splinter factions develop between bandwagoners and hardcore or first-generation followers, and people move on. As commitments wane, so do promises, in much the same way Brigitte and Ginger have to revaluate their sisterhood. Oppositions lose their virulence as well, and move on to more topical targets. Professional networks too lose strength. Ties between colleagues fall limp and fade. Connections become tangential. Yet, more than a decade after the film first bit fans,Ginger Snaps’ presence is as strong as ever.

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