Ginger Snaps II: Entfesselt

After the explosively entertaining "Ginger Snaps", I had some doubts that the sequels could live up to the original. But in this one, we are greeted to a wonderful film picking up exactly where the first one left off: now with Bridget trying to stop herself from becoming a werewolf, and escaping from the rehab center she has been placed in.

If you find cutting and self-mutilation to be disgusting, then this is the film you want to either see or avoid. The opening credits are over a scene of Bridget in the bathtub, cutting herself to pieces. She continues to cut herself throughout the movie, as well as give herself injections.

The scenery is fantastic, as rehabs, hospitals and insane asylums are always great places for horror films if you know how to film them. The makers of this film know exactly what they're doing. Add secret passageways and you're set.

The new cast is also wonderful, easily making up for Ginger having a very small role. The cast now has several male staffers working in an all-girl rehab center, leading to such activities as trading sexual favors for drugs. But most importantly is a new character named "Ghost" (presumably because she's almost like an albino) who is fascinated with the occult and death and befriends Bridget after finding out she might be a werewolf.

Some interesting plot twists happen I can't reveal here, and as the wolf blood begins to overtake the human blood, things heat up. And then another werewolf shows up to try and mate.

Oh, heck. Just watch the movie. These guys have taken a worn-out horror staple (lycanthropy) and added such a new dimension to it that it's almost like an entirely new invention. Excelsior!

"Ginger Snaps" single-handedly raised my interest in lycanthropic cinema, and "Ginger Snaps Unleashed" is a remarkably strong sequel that works for many of the same reasons. Like the thoughtful horror cinema of George Romero, where deeper human issues boil under a more obvious horror surface, "Ginger Snaps" used lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty and its impact on teenage relationships; "Unleashed" uses it as a metaphor for addiction, with Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins--"It"), sister of the ill-fated Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), injecting herself with wolfbane to curb her increasingly wolf-like tendencies. While in a rehab clinic for troubled teens, Brigitte forges a relationship with Ghost (Tatiana Maslany), a precocious girl whose seeming innocence unravels her secret. The new writing/directing team of Megan Martin and Brett Sullivan pick up where the previous film left off, skillfully bridging the two with a bare minimum of rehashed exposition, and the end result is extremely satisfying (though the machinations of "Unleashed"'s final third made me wish the script had tied some thematic/character arcs together better). Perkins, who is becoming a real horror ingénue, plays Brigitte with sympathy and sarcastic bite, and her relationship with Maslany comes close to matching the sense of sisterly love that provided the endearing backbone of the original "Ginger Snaps." "Unleashed" is the rare sequel that does its parent proud.

Brigitte (Emily Perkins) is going through a transformation that she is fighting, but will not be able to stop. Just when she thinks she is close, she gets locked up in a drug treatment facility. Perkins is fantastic in her depiction of someone who is fighting her own demons while no one can possibly understand them. She makes this movie and she is really fun to watch.

Also impressive is Tatiana Maslany (Eastern Promises, Diary of the Dead) as Ghost. She seems a little flighty at first and we really don't get to know her until the very end. It is that ending where she comes into her own with a surprising twist.

The was a good sequel to the first film, and it picked up right where it left off. Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) even makes a few ghostly appearances.

Well worth watching.

You know t's such a shame that neither of these films went wide release. Sure they needed a little touching up in some places but these films are definate quality material. A breathe of fresh air in the horror films which is recreating itself once again as a truly important genre. Both of these films are good, and borderline great. they take somewhat sillacious storylines and make them somewhat believable filled with aggreassive dark humor and independent film dread. This sequel is pretty much a direct continuation of the original. It leaves the last films heroine Bridget infected and fighting her illness with the cure found in the last film. She's beginning to change when she's taken in by a youth facility and locked up for drug abuse. What insues is unfortunatly unwelcome and senseless visits from the first films title charachter but a vast mixing pool of other cringe inducing twists including the fact that a male werewolf has found her and wants to mate. A sleezy hospital guard who trades sexual favors for drugs. An innocent little girl obsessed with comic books. I wish I could truly give away the ending to you. Because it was so well done and I just didnt see it coming. And that is what this film prides itself on unpredictability. It goes in a completely opposite direction of where you though it was going and it makes sense. All in all the film has much to be successful with believable performances, especially from the film's lead Bridget, a good storyline, suspenseful direction, a creepy score all adding up to a startling refreshing take on an otherwise dying genre. Don't be fooled this sequel has major bite!

This is a genuinely creepy film, with creepy plot, creepy filming and creepy story with several creepy scenes. A sequel inspired by but not a thematic continuation of the first. With most sequels you walk in expecting an extension of the first, all the things that worked in the first film delivered in the second. Seldom does the sequel collect the audacity to march off in a different direction.

This one bravely does and creates and entirely different film, a much darker one spun cleanly from the first.

Apologies to all the nay sayers but this is dead solid perfect.

A cult niche and maybe a lesson on how to do sequels ... get creative people on board to use the engine of unexpected popularity, or expected popularity, for inventive film making.

I'll own this one and the original.

Cool.