Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

Although not as clever and fresh as its forebear, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed does share enough of the original's wit and style to make for a pretty fun teen horror flick. Picking up a short time after the end of the first film, the sequel begins with a very squirrelly Brigitte (Emily Perkins) mainlining monkshood in a cheap motel in order to stave of her inevitable transformation into a werewolf. After an overdose, she wakes up in rehab where she is mistaken for a junkie, locked up and subjected to excruciating therapy sessions. At the clinic, Brigitte meets Ghost (Tatiana Maslany), a bizarre kid who is living there while her grandmother recovers from full body burns (apparently, in order to fund the drug programs for teens, the clinic takes in chronic care patients). Ghost and Brigitte hatch an escape plan to get away from the clinic's prying doctors, bitchy patients, sleazy orderlies and, most importantly, the impending visit from a lycanthropic monster desperate to mate with Brigitte. While the first Ginger Snaps was wonderfully set against the backdrop of soulless suburbia, this film chooses more typical horror film environments, such as the hospital's crumbling abandoned wing and an isolated cabin in the woods. The story is rooted in Brigitte's struggle to not turn into the kind of evil creature her sister became, but the true highlights of the film are its send-up of the teen rehab experience and the introduction of the Ghost character, who is alternately hilarious and disturbing, and just gets more and more interesting as things go on. The film could do without the ongoing supernatural appearances by Ginger herself (Katherine Isabelle), which add nothing whatsoever to the story. With Ghost in the picture, who needs Ginger anymore? (Seville)