This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
chelsea’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
“together forever?”
“united against life as we know it”
one of the first movies i ever felt seen by. i can’t remember if when i first saw this was either before or after i lost a friend who was like a sister to me to suicide, but either way i watched it a lot in that time period. it resonated with me not only on the level of relating to the characters. the obsession with death, miserable look permanently plastered on my face, adorning myself in baggy clothes never wanting anyone to look at me, using sarcasm and jokes as a way to hide how deeply miserable i truly was, wishing to never have to leave my room and how deeply i didn’t want to be there when i was in school. ginger’s anger... oh how deeply i felt and still feel that. the sisterhood themes, watching someone you love change and pull away and get sucked into something dark and then ultimately losing a sister resonated with me too. my friend was older than me and ginger’s protective nature reminds me of her. rather die than be here without you. when ginger gets bitten and brigitte’s pure emotion and when the scars are already healing and ginger’s just saying i’m okay, okay? i’m okay and brigitte crying saying i thought you were going to die. GODDDDD. the bathroom scene where ginger is trying to cut off her tail and the emotion from both of them in that scene gets me every time. TEARS. ginger’s i can’t be like this! and brigitte’s you give up, you leave me here alone, i would NEVER do that to you and when they’re hugging and you just see the knife on the floor. that’s probably just one of my favourite scenes in anything ever. people can complain about the wolf suit all they want and i get that it doesn’t look like the greatest thing in the world but honestly who cares you’re boring if you don’t like it for that reason. it’s not even there That much and they also knew that themselves and i think they worked around it as well as they could really and the ending with brigitte’s reaction and emily’s acting in that scene and when it’s showing all of the pictures of them together... yes i am very upset. it really says a lot about how amazing both katharine and emily are in their roles that i’ve seen this so many times and there are still so many scenes i get really emotional at and that will usually make me cry. i just get completely sucked into them as characters and their relationship and how real them and their relationship feels to me. of course i love ginger losing her shit but i almost wish there was more of brigitte and ginger just being brigitte and ginger prior to ginger getting bitten but i recognise that probably wouldn’t be as exciting for most other people as it would be for me lmao. i wish i could stay with and see more of these characters forever. how well they establish their relationship and how close they feel in such a short period of time is so well done and impressive though
i really love that ginger snaps is written in a way where it manages to be relatable to not just what it’s actually about but the metaphor is easily applicable to a lot of other things too because there’s multiple ways i relate to it myself and i like seeing other people relate to it in different ways. both characters are really well realised and it’s easy to relate to it through the perspective of being like brigitte too and not actually being the one going through something, but what it’s like to watch someone else you love going through something and trying and not being able to help them and watching them change, maybe even to the point of becoming unrecognisable. as well as all that it’s just a super funny cool as fuck movie, certain lines of dialogue never get old and i’ve seen this so many times. ginger’s dead serious face and how katharine delivers the “b, i just got the curse” line talking about her period takes me out every time. the 00s fashion and ginger’s silver streaks later on in the movie, the little details like in the way their room looks and the stuff on their walls, the necklaces they wear and pictures of them on the wall in their house, the amazing opening credits, the mum character not knowing what’s really going on but saying she’ll burn down the house and run away with them anyway, there’s just so much to love
i’m so glad i discovered this movie when i did and that it’s been with me for about the past ten years give or take. shoutout to my grandma who used to buy horror movies and she had ginger snaps and my mum and i lived with her when i was growing up so i was always able to go through her dvds and picked up ginger snaps one day. i know i would have loved this movie at any time because it has so many things i love in it but it felt like it came into my life when i most needed it and even in the past when i’ve gone awhile without watching it, it’s always been so nice and comforting to come back to it and i will love and defend this movie forever. it’s the perfect mix of horror, sadness, humour and love
anyway clearly i shouldn’t be allowed to talk about this movie because a tangent will ensue as well as a reawakened desire to put silver streaks in my hair
