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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 42.11%
Worth A Look: 27.63%
Average: 10.53%
Pretty Bad: 10.53%
Total Crap: 9.21%
5 reviews, 46 user ratings
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| Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed |
by Brian McKay
"Teen Angst Wolf 2"
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Would you shag a werewolf? Probably not (personally, I'd prefer not to shag something that's shaggier than me). But what if the werewolf were trying to shag YOU? Such is the dilemma facing our heroine in GINGER SNAPS 2, which equates teenage girl hormones run amok with lycanthropic bloodlust.After her older sister, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), turned all furry and toothy in the last movie, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) finds that she is also slowly undergoing "the change" (menopause in an 18 year old must be a hell of a thing . . . but I digress). In order to stave off her transformation, she takes a page straight out of the Blade movies and starts injecting wolfsbane on a regular basis. But when she is attacked by a werewolf who is looking for some lycanthrope lovin', she survives only to wake up and find herself in a hospital for troubled teen girls with drug problems. Of course, getting drugs in the hospital isn't a problem, so long as the girls are willing to give the sadistic pretty-boy orderly Tyler (Eric Johnson) a hummer in exchange for a fix.
When Brigitte refuses to give in to Tyler's demands, he takes great pleasure in taunting her and withholding her doses of wolfsbane. Luckily, a younger girl named Ghost (Tatiana Maslany) takes an interest in Brigitte. Addicted to comic books and seemingly unable to tell fantasy from reality, she seems to know all the secret ways in and out of the hospital, and where Tyler keeps his stash. First she helps Brigitte get her fix, then she helps her escape - with a horny werewolf sniffing right behind them.
While Ginger Snaps 2 is by no means a "necessary" sequel, it is a surprisingly enjoyable one. Obviously, the marginal success of the first film didn't warrant a huge budget increase for the second. The werewolf effects are still cheesy as hell, so the filmmakers wisely show the creature as little as possible and for only brief moments. However, sometimes less is more, and the atmosphere of stalking menace can be accomplished just as effectively with some quick cuts and the clever use of sound and lighting effects. The dialogue is also surprisingly well done for a movie with such young actors, and that is aimed at the teen demographic. Perkins gives Ginger Snaps 2 a tough heroine, and Maslany gives the best performance in the film. Yes, Ghost is an annoying and manipulative little bitch - but hey, blame the character, not the actress. Her character is annoying, but also tragic and, above all, believable.Hell, it's no DOG SOLDIERS, but it is one of the better Werewolf movies to come out in the past few years - as was its predecessor. Don't let the ravings of a few fanboys overly-inflate your expectations, and enjoy it for what it is.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8643&reviewer=258
originally posted: 03/21/04 20:33:57
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 San Francisco Horror Film Festival. For more in the 2004 San Francisco Horror Festival series, click here.
For more in the Direct To Video Sequels series, click here.
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USA
13-Apr-2004 (R)
DVD: 13-Apr-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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