There aren’t enough female werewolves. This is a disappointment because the werewolf myth works so perfectly as a female coming of age allegory. Your body changes in ways you can’t predict or understand, your emotions run wild, and you are filled with a need that you have never experienced before. Are you becoming a woman or a werewolf? Is there much difference? Ginger Snaps explores the similarities in vivid and unflinching detail while also delving into the realm of taboo female sexuality, and familial codependency and though Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) manages to survive, her ultimate final girl status is not a victory, but a horrific tragedy.
Ginger Snaps follows Brigitte and her slightly older teen sister Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle who ironically was about five years younger than Emily). Two gothic outcasts who are obsessed with death and enjoy making photo series of themselves dying violently for their art class. They don’t have friends apart from each other and seem to greatly disdain their classmates who bully and objectify them in equal measure. Ginger, the more outgoing and “beautiful” of the two as opposed to gawky Brigitte seems to be an object of lust for the boys in their class.(Katharine Isabelle was like nineteen in that movie but now she’s thirty-nine so Katharine if you’re reading this — I am single and you can find me on Instagram!)
Ginger and Brigitte have a suicide pact — “Out by sixteen or dead on the scene but together forever!” they say while slicing open their palms — they would both rather die than be separated and become average kept women like their mother. When Ginger starts her first period she is outraged (“Kill yourself to be different and your own body screws you. But if I start simping around tampon dispensers, moaning about PMS, shoot me ok?”) but things only get worse once she is scratched by a werewolf one night while taking photos. First Ginger experiences blinding pain in her abdomen, then she starts bleeding profusely (much more than is normal for a period…), she grows hair in quantities she never has before, her sister is very worried for her. The school nurse says this is all normal but Brigitte doesn’t believe it.
Ginger begins showing in interest in boys and sex. She starts smoking weed with them and dressing more “provocatively”. Brigitte is convinced there is something wrong. Ginger thinks Brigitte is just jealous. And she is, thought it is unclear who exactly she is jealous of. Up until this point Ginger and Brigitte have been attached at the hip and now Ginger is entering into a world that Brigitte is obviously uncomfortable with. It isn’t until Ginger starts killing people that they both begins to get a little bit nervous. Brigitte pierces Ginger’s belly with a silver ring. Obviously it doesn’t work. But as Brigitte races to try to save her sister from becoming a monster Ginger feels empowered by her new abilities. She wants to share them. She wants her and Brigitte to be together forever the way they wanted. But Brigitte doesn’t want that, it wouldn’t really be her, and this isn’t really Ginger.
When Brigitte kills Ginger it feels like a sacrifice. By killing Ginger, Brigitte has also killed a piece of herself, but she keeps a part of Ginger with her because Ginger bites her before she dies. Brigitte has been given the power of the wolf, but she has lost her sister in the process. This weeks final girl of the week doesn’t have the triumphant end of Sydney Prescott or Buffy Summers. She is a final girl who would have much rather not been the last one. She would have preferred the monster stay alive.
