1815. Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald, two orphaned teenaged sisters, seek refuge at an isolated trading fort in the snowy Canadian wilderness. They soon learn that the fort is under siege from werewolves lurking in the surrounding woods. After Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is attacked and bitten by the lycanthropic son of the fort's factor, she begins to change. Her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) seeks a cure while trying to keep them both safe from the men in the fort, whose mistrust of the sisters is stoked by a bloodthirsty, wrathful minister.
Directed by Grant Harvey, Ginger Snaps Back is a period piece (no pun intended) and a prequel to Ginger Snaps (2000), the story of a young woman who, on the night she first menstruates, is attacked by a werewolf and begins to transform into a monster. It was followed by Ginger Snaps Unleashed (2004), which follows the plight of Ginger's sister, Brigitte, as she struggles to find a cure for her own latent lycanthropy. Written by Christina Ray and Stephen Massicotte, Ginger Snaps Back enriches the mythology established in these earlier films and explores themes such as ancestral heritage, ‘monstrous femininity’, reincarnation and predestination, and the persecution of women in patriarchal communities.
Opening with a moody scene in which the sisters, separated from their travelling party and lost in the woods, have a strange encounter with a Cree seer woman who prophesises a dark fate for them, in which one sister will kill the other. They are rescued from a pack of ravenous wolves by The Hunter (Nathaniel Arcand), who guides them to Fort Bailey. Inside, the men are wary and distrustful, and it becomes evident that fear pervades the camp, and tension is rife within the group. Grant conjures a stifling, toxic atmosphere, thick with paranoia and masculine aggression. The men's mistrust of the sisters is stoked by the puritanical Reverend Gilbert, a misogynist sadist, who accuses the sisters of being everything from temptresses and witches, to demons and devils. They are the only women at the fort, which also creates a swathe of uneasy tension as they become the objects of leering, lustful glances. From the outset, Ray and Massicotte's screenplay uses anachronistic dialogue between the sisters ('These people are fucked'), which while initially quite surprising, doesn't distract too much. It's not only highly entertaining, but actually serves to set the sisters apart from everyone else, further establishing them as outsiders and, more importantly, establishing a direct link with their later incarnations/descendants (the sisters in the first two films), who will be just as sardonic and acerbic.
Grant laces the film with striking imagery, not least the sisters' bloody dreams and visions, and the sight of Ginger after her first kill, a shock of red streaked across her face. A suitably chilly atmosphere is enhanced by freezing winter landscapes and the sombre score by Alex Khaskin, which heightens the sense of foreboding and inevitable doom. The werewolves are largely relegated to the shadows, we see only fleeting glimpses of them: a flash of fang here, a glowing eye there.
When Ginger is bitten and begins to change, she embraces the power she gains. This is where Ginger Snaps Back entwines with the work of Angela Carter, specifically The Company of Wolves (1984), in which lycanthropy was used to explore ideas relating to female sexuality, autonomy and liberation from societal shackles. According to Chantal Bourgault du Coudray, author of The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror and the Beast Within, the figure of the female werewolf speaks to “anxiety about female sexuality” and “contributed to a discourse that envisioned women as a threat to the lives and aspirations of men.” While the likes of Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941) popularised the notion of the doomed lycanthropic (male) protagonist who desperately wants to be free of his curse, works featuring female werewolves – including Ginger Snaps, The Company of Wolves and The Howling – depict women characters who embrace the change, something that has become quite typical in representations of the female werewolf.
Ray and Massicotte's screenplay also strongly evokes Clemence Housman's short novel The Were-Wolf (1896), which tells of a powerful female werewolf - White Fell - driven out of her community and pursued across a snowy wilderness. Housman was an activist in the women's suffrage movement, and The Were-Wolf can be read as the story of a woman whose strength and independence intimidates the men in her community, so she is driven out and ostracised. There are also echoes of Henry Beaugrand’s short story ‘The Werewolves’ (1898), which is similarly set in The Great White North during frontier times and features a group of early pioneers who believe there are (Indigenous) werewolves prowling around outside their snowbound fort. Beaugrand’s story in turn inspired the lost film The Werewolf (1913), which was written by journalist Ruth Ann Baldwin. Like Ginger Snaps Back, this title also explored ideas concerning the 'othering' of women and Indigenous peoples, with its story of a female werewolf who embraces the power her inner beast unleashes. This is mirrored in the figure of Ginger who, along with her sister, eventually rejects her prophesised destiny and the pair strike out on their own in the ultimate act of rebellion and self-determination.
Ginger Snaps Back is an unusual, arresting werewolf flick, and a fitting addition to the cult trilogy.