Review of Ginger Snaps (2000) by Marc5477 — 10 Sep 2015

It was not a ground breaking movie, nor a bad movie by any stretch. A lot of reviews (especially at IMDB) overthink the plot (like this was some deep scifi flick) and state that its yet another tweeny horror movie.

.. it is not a teen horror flick. There is no retarded teenage love story in this movie nor any nudity nor a bunch of topless guys. There are no cheap gimmics in this movie designed to draw teens. It is a straight forward horror drama about two sisters and how they try to cope with one turning to a werewolf.

The quality of the film is definitely limited; this was not a big budget flick but at the same, the low budget and lack of CGI really give it a very natural eerie feel similar to how old horror movies used to be.

The only exception is the werewolf itself which looks pretty 80s (in a bad way) but was not really in the movie for very long any way and the movie is not really about cheap scares anyway. I always felt like older horror movies were much more convincing due to narrower camera perspectives (smaller resolutions and angles) and use of imagination (making people think) over CGI and special effects.

Todays average horror flick is very bad (more like garbage) and has mostly devolved to formulaic snore fests requiring over the top violence and gore (a la Saw or Hostel) and/or cheap surprise scares which stop working once a person gets older.

This was a nice change of pace and I plan to watch the next two movies.