It's tough to follow up a brilliant film. It's almost inescapable fact that a sequel it won't be able to reach the grandeur of the first one, certainly will dissatisfy a lot of people, and probably will end up trashing anything that was good about the original.
Still, I tend to be hopeful.
I went to the theater to watch Chris Walas' abysmal sequel to David Cronenberg's brilliant The Fly, for example, and as soon as I found out that Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed was going out on DVD I had to order a copy (I couldn't wait to see of my video club would get it or not) - even if the foreshadowing if its being directed by the editor of the first one was too much like The Fly 2, where the guy in charge of special effects in the original was at the helm.
You see, Ginger Snaps caused an impression in me that I didn't expect. I fell in love with it immediately, and it made me a follower of both Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins. Perkins, who proved her skills with the transformation in the first movie from a girl subservient to her sister into the independent young woman forced into the being the one in control, carries the sequel marvelously. Even if at times the script becomes forced, with false-sounding lines that are patched up in it and stick out like they're wearing a she's supposed to act like this t-shirt (something that never happened in Ginger Snaps), Emily Perkins still delivers them with enough confidence to sell them.
Part of the movie's problem is that we are forced to watch Bridget, the more human of the Ginger Snaps characters, devolve into an bestial fiend. Such a transformation had the potential to be as poignant as the crumbling of her relationship with Ginger, or the slow devolving of Seth Brundle into a regurgitating mass of brittle tissue, but the script by first-time writer Megan Martin isn't up to par - it certainly tries, but stumbles so much that it reaches the conclusion battered and bruised.
A conclusion, by the way, which is the movie's other big problem. While not inconsequential with the rest of the film (and it had indeed been foreshadowed often), it lacks the apotheosis of the first, the feeling that things couldn't possibly have ended any differently. Given that the way things turn out may disappoint some fans, that feeling of inevitability was crucial.
In the end, it's an entertaining suspense movie. It's not The Fly 2, fortunately, and it works well enough as methadone for people who were suffering from Ginger Snaps deprivation.
Posted by Ricardo at April 26, 2004 11:16 AM