Ginger Snaps (2000)

“Out by sixteen or dead on the scene, but together forever.” — Ginger

“Too much blood. And I can see your gaunch!” says Brigitte, annoyed. Ginger, her body impaled on a white picket fence, sticky red blood sprayed across her middle, gives us the finger. “Just do it,” she says. Brigitte brings a 35mm camera to her eye and snaps the photo. An entire world in microcosm.

When Ginger Snaps, the cult horror-comedy directed by John Fawcett and written by Karen Walton, was released in 2000, it was an outlier among outliers. In a genre oozing with regressive and often outright sexist portrayals of women, Ginger Snaps was a monstrously funny film about two teenage girls whiling away the beige of suburban Bailey Downs. Ginger and Brigitte did this in their own special way: through elaborate tableaux of suicide and death, photographed and presented as a slideshow for a school assignment. These tableaux form the opening title sequence to Ginger Snaps, introducing the world to the Fitzgerald sisters through a masterpiece of title design.

These staged scenes are the girls’ ode to and rejection of suburbia, the sequence becoming a mini-text within the film that lays bare their whirling inner lives; their feelings of connection, nihilism, creativity, curiosity, and disillusionment are all there, laid out neatly among the peroxide and lace. The attention to detail in the grisly gestalts is astounding, with references to everything from children’s fairy tales (The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland) and classic literature (Paradise Lost) to obscure dead Russians (Pavel T. Shvetsov) and contemporary cinema (Se7en, Heathers). The music, composed by Mike Shields, features violin and cello and smatterings of giggles, deftly wielding a melancholy that manages to avoid dipping into cornball.

When the snaps of Ginger and Brigitte come to an end, a sense of sadness and nostalgia emerges, as if the show, and their innocence, has already come and gone.

A discussion with Director JOHN FAWCETT and Screenwriter KAREN WALTON.

Before we dive into Ginger Snaps, I wanted to ask a little bit about you both because you’ve worked on a lot of projects between you, especially in TV. Karen, how did you become a screenwriter?

Karen: I entered a contest because I needed some money! [laughs] Maybe that’s not the most responsible answer, but it’s true. I didn’t train in film, I trained in drama and theatre. I became a screenwriter after not being sure what I wanted to do and having lots of jobs. My last day job…

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