Ginger Snaps: Unleashed

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. * * 1/2 Actors: Emily Perkins, Tatiana Maslany, Eric Johnson Writer: Megan Martin Director: Brett Sullivan.

The second part of the "Ginger Snaps" trilogy picks up after the first one. Bridgitte has infected herself with Ginger's blood who has turned into a werewolf. In order to keep herself from becoming like her sister, she must inject herself daily with monkshood. After barely escaping a werewolf that has found her, she awakes in a clinic that treats all things including drug addiction. With her drugs taken away, Bridgitte can't escape what she is becoming.

I loved the 1st movie and I found the second one to be a worthwhile sequel. While the first one simmered with satire on female hormones and puberty, "Unleashed" is a straight horror film. It's too bad we don't see much of Ginger in this one, but she does turn up as a ghost who warns Bridgitte that another one waits for her. Bridgitte is a lot more confident and a lot hotter than the first one. But although this is her story, the one character that steals the show is a young girl at the hospital named Ghost. Bridgitte befriends this girl because she can help get her monkshood and I'm sure she feels a little bad that all the other patients make fun of her. There is a twist at the end of this movie that I was not expecting, but on my second viewing of it. I don't know how I could have missed it. All the warning signs were shown in the first thirty minutes.

If you haven't seen the first one you could just watch this one alone. It has a good enough story to keep you interested. It's not as fulfilling as the original, but it's a nice desert

I wasn't expecting to like this movie all that much. I did like Ginger Snaps, and thought that it was kind a of new twist on the tired old werewolf genre... but it didn't seem like it needed or warranted a sequel. This movie went in a direction that I wasn't expecting. Rather than just doing a retread of the first story, the filmmakers chose to follow Ginger's sister Brigitte into a mental institution after the events of the first movie. It becomes more of a psychological thriller, and focuses on whether or not Brigitte is really going to turn into a werewolf or if she might just be going crazy. Granted, that may be what a lot of people don't like about it, but I ended up really enjoying the movie. It was done with a decent amount of style and the concept was eerie enough to keep me watching. As far as sequels go, not a bad one.

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.

There are some films that just shouldn't have a sequel.

So, given that I firmly believe this about 'Ginger Snaps', 'Ginger Snaps Unleashed' clearly had a tough act to follow. And y'know, it didn't do too badly.

So by now we've all got the plot - Bridgit mainlining wolfsbane to not become like her sister, passes out in the snowy streets after another werewolf attack and wakes up in a rehab centre. Yada yada, this is IMDb, you can look up the plot summary earlier. But the way it develops...OK, it's no way as symbolic as the first film but it's damn logical. It all makes sense in context, right down to the *deeply* messed up ending. Which in some ways is a drawback because it's a little *too* realistic to always engage; it's a bit dull at times, just like rl. And all the characters are 2-dimensional except for Bridget, Ghost, and maybe the creepy Tyler.

But! Those three? Carry the movie. Emily Perkins is as great as she was in the first film, and Eric Johnson shows us that when it came to Smallville, *Lana* should have left on the bus to go into military. But the real find is Tatiana Maslany, who quite frankly is *terrifying* as Ghost. Which is maybe another criticism; given the ending I shouldn't have worked things out as quickly as I did, but that's not just due to Tatiana, that's also due to other clues in the film. This aside, she rocks as Ghost and it's great to see the kind of character Ghost is lead to the conclusion it does because frankly? Yeah, makes sense. And I really cannot say much more without spoiling it.

So, in conclusion. A lot of holes, not so special second time round, and too few 3 dimensional characters. But he cinematography is ace and very like the first (which makes sense given this one's director edited the first one, and John Fawcett did some unofficial second unit stuff on here too) and I think it's a film that'll grow on me. It's certainly worth a go - 7 out of 10.

"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.