Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2004)

Movie Info

Listen…I can see through you, Ghost

Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) is on the run.  Haunted by being forced to kill her sister Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and fighting lycanthropy herself, Brigitte finds herself confined to a mental health institute when police believe that the monkshood she uses to subdue her transformation are drugs.  Brigitte must escape the institute because she’s being pursued by a wolf who sees her as his own kind and her only hope could be a girl named Ghost (Tatiana Maslany) who knows the ins and outs of the institute.

Directed by Brett Sullivan, Ginger Snaps 2:  Unleashed is a follow-up to the sleeper hit film Ginger Snaps from 2000.  The film was shot back-to-back with a third film Ginger Snaps Back:  The Beginning (also released in 2004.  It received mixed to positive reviews.

Ginger Snaps was a surprising little movie.  The ties of adulthood and puberty to becoming a werewolf was a smart and new way to tell an old story.  Ginger Snaps 2 tries to continue the ingenuity of Ginger Snaps but falls short.

I got to get me a wolf-girl!!!

Despite being called Ginger Snaps, Ginger is barely in the film.  Killed in the last movie, Emily Perkins must carry most of the film herself.  The Ghost character played by Tatiana Maslany is pretty transparent (ironically) and with the original character of Brigitte being an intuitive outsider, I don’t see how she couldn’t have seen through Ghost’s lies a lot easier.  The dynamic is kind of interesting but Brigitte is smarter than the movie makes her.

This leads to a story that is a bit of Halloween II (with Brigitte trapped in the hospital) and a bit An American Werewolf in London with Brigitte fighting what she’s becoming (or I guess in this case A Canadian Werewolf Up North).  The story isn’t quite as strong and the themes of addiction and trust have been played pretty thin.

Meet my new boyfriend

Visually, the movie looks a bit better with the wolves and transformations looking a bit more realistic and more wolflike.  The wolves of the movie just “go wolf” and never return to being human so it does help with budgets having Perkins just looking strung out most of the film and not actually the wolf.

Ginger Snaps 2:  Unleashed is a fun movie and still slightly better than the standard horror fare.  The movie still has some spark and creativity to it though the movie doesn’t live up to the original.  It is interesting to change the change in direction for Perkins’ character from the start of the first film, but the missing dynamic between the sisters does hurt the movie in comparison.  Ginger Snaps 2:  Unleashed went back to the basics (way back) by making Ginger Snaps Back:  The Beginning a period piece set in 1815.

Related Links:

Ginger Snaps (2000)

Ginger Snaps Back:  The Beginning (2004)