Blogosaurus

Tivo'd and watched Ginger Snaps, a Canadian-made horror film from 2000 about two "weird girls" (I use quotes to indicate that that description is a specific category in high school), obsessed with death (they stage fake suicides as a class project and obsess about the real thiing), and what happens when one of them gets her first period at the same time a werewolf is roaming the suburban subdivision. (The blood attracts, you see.)

Now, I realize that that description right there might be enough to cut off any interest you had in the movie, I don't normally see menstruation movies any more than I raced to see Menopause: The Musical when it opened here in Chicago. It's not perfect-- at first it may seem a bit caricatured (the standard-issue movie suburb and clueless parents) and too reminiscent of things like Heathers or Harold and Maude. And the ending is more action movieish than satisfying on a character level.

But for its picture of screwed-up teens (superbly acted by two unknowns, Emily Perkins and Katharine Isabelle), this is just about the smartest teen horror film ever made, which finds lots of good analogies between the destructive and disorienting awakening of sexuality and the ravenous desire for destruction of a werewolf. In fact, it's one of the best teen movies of recent years, at least as intelligent as a straight drama like Gas Food Lodging, which had a similarly-aged pair of sisters.

So of course it went straight to video while dozens of I Still Vaguely Recall What You Did A Summer Or Two Back, Or Was It Someone Else get nationwide release. However, it seems to be popular on video, as it's spawned two sequels which sound better than average, too, or at least more than casually tossed-off junk-- the third, bizarrely, transports the two girls to a fort in 18th century Canada where werewolves are on the prowl!