Teen Horror Cast

This week we tackle a classic theme in the horror genre: WEREWOLVES. However rather than start with what might be thought of as the typical classic werewolf movies we decided to watch Gingersnaps, a canadian release from 2000 which explores the werewolf narrative through the eyes of teen girls.

A heads up that this film and our discussion of it touches on subjects like animal death, gore, discussion of sex, drugs, and suicide. Additionally we will be fully spoiling the movie and we feel your experience will be a lot better if you watch this movie in particular before listening to the podcast. The plot is fairly complicated, there are some cool twists, and we don’t want any of those to be dampened by spoilers ahead of time, so if you haven’t seen it and wish to, pause now and come back when you’re ready! We’ll be waiting.

Summary

Ginger Snaps is a 2000 Canadian horror film directed by John Fawcett who would later go on to co-create the popular tv show Orphan Black. The film was written by Karen Walton, scored by Mike Shields, with cinematography by Thom Best and editing by Brett Sullivan.

The film opens in the community of Bailey Downs. In a shot reminiscent of Poltergeist, the camera pans across grotesquely similar houses that have metastasized on the natural landscape in a relatively new housing development. The opening shots linger on the edge of the development where the cookie-cutter houses give way to the wilds of nature.

We witness the early and horrific discovery of a family dog’s remains, victim of an apparent animal attack and, we find out soon, only one in a series of such incidents. As the woman who discovers the dog screams in the background, we see her neighbor and central character, Brigitte Fitzgerald (played by Emily Perkins) walking cautiously out of the garage armed with a variety of dangerous looking tools including a blowtorch.

Hunching her shoulders, glaring angrily at the world, pale faced and gothic, Brigitte enters the house to tell her sister, Ginger Fitzgerald (played by Katharine Isabelle) about the neighbors dog, interrupting what at first appears to be a suicide attempt. It is clear in a moment that Ginger is just showing off or playing at the theme of suicide, adopting a bored-of-life attitude that reeks of teen angst. After some angry banter we realize the girls have adopted identities as gothy town outcasts and have promised each other to escape their dreary town by 16 or else die in a suicide pact.

We transition to a typical high school. After a classroom scene where the girls cause a stir with their suicide themed class project, we cut to gym class outside with boys ogling girls playing field hockey. Ginger and Brigitte fight with Trina Sinclair, a popular girl and apparent bully. Coming out on the short end of that exchange, Ginger cajoles Brigitte into kidnapping Trina’s dog. That night, in the middle of executing that plan Ginger finds she is bleeding and realizes with horror that she is the first of the sisters to get her period.

Drawn by the scent of blood, a beast in the night viciously attacks and bites Ginger, dragging her into the forest. In a panic Brigitte runs after her and tries to scare off the beast with the flash from her instant camera. The beast is startled and runs off, immediately killed after being hit by a van driven by Sam Miller (played by Kris Lemche), a local pot dealer and, we find out later, botany nerd.

Ginger recovers from her attack, horrible wounds healing rapidly, and a series of physical and behavioral transformations begin. Her latent anger and aggression boil over, bristly hair grows in her scars from the attack, a tail buds at the base of her spine, and her period intensifies. Previously hidden under layers of clothes she strides into school in a tight outfit and with new self assurance.

The slasher that launched a thousand hockey masks! Be warned, spoilers ahead, so if you haven't had a chance to sit down with a bowl of popcorn and Friday the 13th on VHS (or however you want to watch this classic), better do so now!
In this episode:

• Surprise Blue Velvet!
• Mr. Jorts
• Trusting your instincts about creepy men
• Tom Savini fan club
• How to have fun at murder summer camp

Finally we have enough of the classic films under our belt to turn in a solid review of SCREAM! How does a 2020s teen feel about the 1990s high schoolers from Woodsboro? Find out this and more including:

• Why we loved Matthew Lillard’s performance!
• Dewey Dewey Dewey!
• The secret origin of the Teen Horror Podcast!

We also get serious with a discussion of how we feel about horror movies after some real life horror experiences (a school shooting). We provide skip ahead time codes if you’d rather skip this section.

Teen Horror Cast, where we watch and discuss horror movies from a teen’s perspective. This week we watched The Grudge, a classic of the J-Horror sub genre. 2004’s The Grudge is a remake of a Japanese film from 2002. Both films were directed by Takashi Shimizu. If you listened to our episode number 3 on another J-Horror film, The Ring, we will be handling this situation of an American remake of a Japanese original in a similar manner. We’ll be focusing the summary on the American film so that we can use English language audio but we will have some discussion about both versions later on in the episode.

Content warning: this film is pretty gruesome and touches on subjects such as domestic abuse.

This week we watched a movie that changed horror, and taking showers, forever: Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece "PSYCHO."

Our discussion touched on subjects including both fictional and real serial killers and murder. We will be spoiling this film, so if you haven't seen it, please watch it first and come back for the discussion.
Regarding language: While we realize that, shockingly, teens are usually very familiar with the rich tapestry of english language swear words, unless otherwise noted at the beginning of our episodes we will be keeping things family friendly and avoiding cussing in both our banter and movie clips. Of course in this episode, even without f bombs, the subject matter is still pretty intense so probably not appropriate for younger kids.