The Grudge (2004)

Any American who's seen an Asian horror movie can attest to the fact that the land of the rising sun churns out some very different horror movies, ones that we Americans aren't really used to seeing. Horror movies here in the States usually deal with some serial killer with a sharp object looking to kill people for their transgressions. Have sex, you're gonna die. Do drugs, you're gonna die. Kick a puppy, you're gonna die. Cheat on your algebra midterm, you're probably still gonna die (sorry). If you do something naughty in any way, shape, or form, you're bound for certain doom. But if you do encounter the villain, you might be able to live.

But in Asian horror movies, everybody's screwed. Everyone from the cute four-year-old kid you saw at Toys 'R' Us to that prick who cut you off in traffic on your way to work, they don't stand an ice cube's chance in Hell of surviving if they encounter an Asian horror movie villain. You don't even have to really do anything to incur the wrath of the villain. Just look at the villain, and thanks for playing, your prize is a toe tag and a one-way ticket to Morgue City. The guilty suffer, the innocent suffer, animals suffer, everybody suffers.

And not only that, but Asian horror movies like to seriously mess with your head. We Americans also like to know the whys and the hows of our horror movies. We like everything explained to us and wrapped up with a cute little bow. Why is the mass murderer mass murdering? Where did that icky flesh-consuming virus come from? However, it seems as if Asian horror movies worry less about telling us why something is happening. They just tell us that it is happening and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Asian horror is all about atmosphere and building up as much dread as possible before giving viewers a payoff intended to make you leap out of your skin.

DreamWorks Pictures saw the upside in bringing such a film to American multiplexes when they bought the remake rights to Hideo Nakata's popular Japanese ghost story Ringu, originally released in 1998. Remade as The Ring in 2002, it grossed $128,579,698 at the American box office and prompted studios to buy the remake rights to as many Asian horror movies as they could. One of these was Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on. Its title a play off the Japanese words for "grudge" and "curse," it was at first a popular direct-to-video movie that Shimizu himself remade for Japanese theatrical audiences in 2003. It was this remake that Sam Raimi proclaimed the scariest movie he'd ever seen. Raimi's Ghost House Pictures quickly purchased the remake rights, brought Shimizu on to direct once again, and headed to Japan to tell the tale of a quaint little house that's pissed off at everybody.

The movie begins with a few lines of text, setting up the movie's universe. When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. This curse manifests itself as ghosts that hold a grudge against anyone unlucky or just plain stupid enough to enter the domains they reside in, stalking its victims until they finally perish and pass along their grudge to some other unfortunate person. Exposition aside, let's get to the plot at hand. Our primary story follows Karen Davis (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a foreign exchange student living in Tokyo with her boyfriend Doug (Jason Behr). Karen works as a social worker and hospice nurse in her spare time, and when her coworker Yoko (Yoko Maki) doesn't show up for her shift, she's asked her to be Yoko's temporary substitute.

Karen heads to the house Yoko was assigned to, populated by Matthew Williams (William Mapother), his wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall), and his senile mother Emma (Grace Sabriskie). However, Karen finds the house in complete disarray. The place looks trashed, and the only person there is the near-catatonic Emma. However, there's more in the house than just a mess and a crazy old lady. Karen soon discovers the house is haunted by two malevolent spirits, and as various unusual and increasingly disturbing events occur around her, she and Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) search to find the house's connection to a series of mysterious deaths and the disappearance of Matthew's sister Susan (KaDee Strickland), and how they're all related to a pair of murders and the suicide of an American college professor (Bill Pullman) three years earlier.

The Grudge has gotten a lot of knocks against it for its similarities to The Ring, mainly because they're both horror movies that feature female ghosts with long nasty hair covering their faces. And I'll be the first to admit, some scenes in The Grudge are eerily similar to scenes from The Ring. However, both films are seemingly inspired by Japanese ghost stories about the spirits of wronged women returning from the grave to seek vengeance for their deaths. That said, I loved The Grudge. Loved it. The 2003 version of Ju-on was a frightening enough experience, and this thoroughly faithful remake maintains that same level of fear. I must admit that the American Grudge joins the extremely short list of horror movies that have scared the living crap out of me.

Takashi Shimizu and screenwriter Stephen Susco utilize a Quentin Tarantino trademark in the movie, using a nonlinear style of filmmaking as they jump around the film's timeline to show various points in the story at different times. While it sounds rather confusing and hard to follow, it works to help set the off-kilter atmosphere of the movie. It makes sense if you look at it this way: As Sarah Michelle Gellar's story progresses forward, the story of the house progresses backward. The end of Sarah's story meets the beginning of the house's story in the finale, and it all makes sense in the end.

Also fun are Shimizu's mix of quiet dread and jump scares. Jump scares have become horror clichés over the years, but The Grudge makes very good use of them, and there's not a wasted scare in the movie. And the way Shimizu frames shots (with a little help from the gorgeous work of cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto and production designer Iwao Saito) allow the jump scares to sneak up on us. Even though I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown, every minute of the movie was entertaining.

The effects are superb, from the wisps of smoke that ooze out of a wall to the undead thing that crawls down a flight of stairs (perhaps an homage to a famous deleted scene from The Exorcist?). Also wonderful is the film's score, composed by Christopher Young. If Shimizu's work is frightening visually, then Young's score is frightening audibly. The music is absolutely great. The one thing that bothered me, though, was the insanely high number of Americans in the movie. The movie takes place in Japan, yet there's more Americans in the main cast than there are Japanese people. Is it so hard to find Japanese actors? Maybe they could have called up Tarantino and asked him which casting agency he found Kill Bill's Crazy 88s at.

The crew and most of the cast do a commendable job with what they're given to work with. Sarah Michelle Gellar is watchable, yet she just seems really bland. After seven seasons of having a TV show built around her, it's hard to picture her as a leading lady in a big Hollywood production. And the reputation she developed from Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't help her here, either. Her character here is a weak and scared young lady in an unfamiliar land, as opposed to the sarcastic bad-ass demon killer that everyone recognizes her as. I just kept waiting for her to whip out some of her slayer moves and dropkick the ghosts into next Tuesday, and it never happened. It looks like she's descended into Mark Hamill/Luke Skywalker territory: no matter what she does from now on, she'll always be under the shadow of Buffy Summers.

On the other hand, Jason Behr was a complete failure as Gellar's on-screen love interest. He doesn't have too many scenes, and when he does, he's just awful. He just stands there and looks all Ashton Kutcher-y and has absolutely no personality whatsoever. Casting Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki to reprise their roles as the malicious mother-and-son ghosts from the Ju-on movies was a fun and welcome touch, but perhaps the highlight of the cast was Ryo Ishibashi as the grizzled yet curious Detective Nakagawa. Somebody needs to send Ishibashi to the set of Law & Order or C.S.I. quick, because he did a great job here, and I hope he gets more work in the States.

Despite a paper-thin plot and characters that aren't exactly paragons of complexity, The Grudge is one of those movies that could scare the pants off even the most jaded horror movie viewers. The Grudge literally made me jump out of my seat and scream, and I never do that. The recent trend of remakes has irked a lot of people (including myself), but if they can be as good as The Ring and The Grudge, I say Hollywood should start remaking all the Asian horror movies they can. In spite of its flaws, I'll give The Grudge four stars. Go check it out, won't you?

Final Rating: ****

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

The survival horror genre of video games has given the gaming world some landmark titles since the genre came into prominence in the mid-1990s. But few survival horror games can say they're as influential as Resident Evil. The original game and its sequels have become seminal titles for fans of horror games, and I doubt it came as a big surprise to anyone when a Resident Evil movie was released in 2002.

And although the reactions from fans and critics were decidedly mixed, the movie's box office returns were enough to warrant Sony Pictures sending a sequel into production. Retaining elements of the first movie while adding a heaping helping of elements from the game franchise to soothe upset fanboys, Resident Evil: Apocalypse is at least an improvement over its predecessor.

The movie begins shortly before the end of its predecessor. A team of scientists from the Umbrella Corporation opens up its Hive laboratory below the Midwestern town of Raccoon City following the release of the T-Virus, but like most things in sci-fi/horror movies, things just go straight to Hell and the T-Virus escapes. Umbrella begins evacuating its executives from Raccoon City, leaving the rest of the city to rot. Thirteen hours later, Raccoon City has been contaminated with a widespread outbreak of the T-Virus. The town has become overrun with packs of zombies attacking any citizens they come across, and police actually arresting some zombies.

Around that time, we're reintroduced to Alice (Milla Jovovich), the survivor of the first movie. Like we saw at the end of the previous movie, she awakens in an Umbrella-owned hospital and wanders out into an abandoned street, making sure to snatch a shotgun from a police cruiser. However, she might not need it, as it turns out a round of Umbrella experiments has given her superhuman fighting abilities.

Come nightfall, Raccoon City has descended into chaos. The zombie infestation has reached massive proportions, forcing Umbrella to quarantine the city and quell a mass exodus to prevent their little accident from making national news. A team of Umbrella commandos sent in to clean up the mess has been wiped out, leaving just Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and Nicholai Sekolov (Zach Ward) to fend for themselves. They discover and team up with another band of survivors, comprised of Alice, local pimp L.J. (Mike Epps), news meteorologist Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), and video game heroine Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a suspended member of the Raccoon Police Department's elite STARS division.

The motley crew is soon contacted via payphone by Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), a high-ranking Umbrella scientist outside the city gates who's been following their actions via Raccoon City's street cameras. And folks, Ashford has some crappy news for them. It turns out that Umbrella's gonna use their military connections to drop a nuke on Raccoon City at dawn, but Ashford will guarantee them safe passage out of town before then if they can find his daughter Angie (Sophie Vavasseur), who disappeared following a car accident during the evacuation of Umbrella's crew.

Unless they'd really like to stick around and have a missle dropped on them, they don't really have a choice. Thus, they're stuck fighting through a horde of undead humans and packs of zombie dogs to rescue Angie. However, even after finding Angie, they still have to make it to their rendezvous point intact. But it turns out that zombies and dogs aren't the only things they have to worry about; there are also the Lickers that return from the first movie, and the "Nemesis" (Matthew G. Taylor), a bio-engineered leviathan roaming the streets in search of Alice.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a big violent action roller coaster ride, and it knows it. It has no qualms with substituting thrills in lieu of things like plot advancement and character development. The movie isn't for moviegoers who like well-written stories and Oscar-caliber acting. It's for those who like watching people shoot at monsters with high-powered weapons.

Director Alexander Witt uses his feature film debut to show off years of tricks learned working as a second unit director on flicks like Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and The Bourne Identity, and other than a few moments, the film is visually astounding. Unfortunately, many of the best action scenes are buried underneath quick cuts and shaky camera moves.

And though I said the movie wasn't about plot, the script by Paul W.S. Anderson (who passed the director's chair to Witt so he could make Alien vs. Predator) could have used some work. The plot proper (an amalgamation of the the second and third Resident Evil games with a dash of the original movie for flavor) didn't begin until almost a third of the way through the movie, and the buildup to the climactic Alice/Nemesis fight scene was actually very anticlimactic when it's all said and done. We did get some fun scenes, though; namely a Licker's siege on a church and the survivors fighting their way out of a zombie-infested graveyard. Something is always happening on screen, however, and it's never boring.

Unfortunately, it seems as if Anderson didn't really care about the side characters, just wanting to cram Alice down our throats. If you're going to disrespect the game's characters by making them sidekicks to some new character that comes across as the female John Rambo, the fans are really going to resent you. That's probably why that the Resident Evil movies aren't all that popular with the fans of the franchise that I personally know.

The movie's acting was also give or take, depending on which actor we're talking about. Sienna Guillory was great as Jill, emulating her video game counterpart right down to the way she walked. Too bad she was second banana to Alice, but what can you do? Meanwhile, Milla Jovovich seemed to be half-assing it at times. It's like she said, "Okay, folks, my boyfriend wrote the movie, so the rest of you goons are gonna work while I sit here and look all awesome. Somebody get me a martini." I also liked Oded Fehr as Carlos, but he was severely underused. Why bother promoting Carlos from the games to the movie if you're barely gonna put him in there?

I really enjoyed Mike Epps as well, even if he was just one-dimensional comic relief. He got a lot of mileage out of it, and provided many funny moments. Another thing I enjoyed was Jeff Danna's industrial-metal score. It's far from memorable, but it worked for what the movie needed. And whoever was working the sound effects needs to be beaten. A lot of the scares are accompanied by a loud sound effect, making it seem like they wanted to scare the audience by making them deaf

While Resident Evil: Apocalypse is certainly a better film than its predecessor, it still struggles to reach higher than mediocrity. It teeters precariously on the line between good and bad, coming across as fun at certain times while banal at others. It's really that inconsistency that brings about the movie's downfall. There are some entertaining moments, especially for fans of the games, but ultimately, the movie is average at best. There's a good movie that could be made out of the Resident Evil games, but this sadly isn't it.

Final Rating: ***

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Motion pictures have not been without controversy. Some draw fire for their content, others for their messages. With the exception of Michael Moore's anti-establishment documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, I really can only think of one other movie this decade that has sparked as much debate and media discussion as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Funded by Gibson's own wallet and independently distributed by his Icon Productions company and Newmarket Films (since no major distributor wanted to touch it), it became the little religious epic that could, raking in $604,370,943 worldwide and surpassing My Big Fat Greek Wedding as the highest-grossing independent feature film ever. But does it hold up to the hype?

I'm sure most of you readers know the story of Jesus, but since I'm wont to put the plot in my reviews, you'll just have to hear it again. The movie begins in the middle of the night at Gethsemane, an olive grove near Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth (Jim Caviezel) has gone to there to pray, accompanied by three of His apostles. As the apostles sleep, Jesus prays for His safety, as the prophecy of His death will be soon be fulfilled. Soon thereafter, a group of Roman soldiers appear, led by Judas (Luca Lionello), another of the apostles. Jesus isn't surprised and is actually pretty calm, and after a brief struggle between the three apostles and the soldiers, Jesus peacefully hands Himself over and is led away in chains.

The soldiers bring Jesus before the Jewish leaders, where high priest Caiaphas (Mattia Sbragia) interrogates Him before Jesus admits that He claimed to be the prophesied messiah. As the priests discuss what they should do with their prisoner, a guilt-ridden Judas appears before them, asking them to let Jesus go in return for the thirty pieces of silver he was paid to identify Him. Caiaphas tells Judas that his guilt is none of their business, so Judas throws the bag of silver at them and leaves. The guilt begins to eat away at Judas's sanity, finally pushing him to suicide as he hangs himself from a tree the following morning.

That same morning, Caiaphas and the priests present Jesus before local Roman governor Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shapov), alleging that Jesus is a blasphemer and an insurrectionist. Pilate questions Jesus in private, and under pressure from his wife (Claudia Gerini) and fearing civil unrest, Pilate tells the priests to take Jesus to the hedonistic King Herod (Luca De Dominicis). Jesus's home of Galilee is in Herod's jurisdiction, so why not send him there? The priests present Jesus to Herod, who assumes He's just crazy. Herod gets a good laugh out of the moment, and sends Jesus back to Pilate. Man, and I thought the justice system was screwed up now. Turns out it was just as screwed up 2000 years ago. Two millennia go by, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Anyway, Jesus gets sent back to Pilate, and the priests are sick of getting the run-around. Pilate doesn't believe Jesus is guilty of any wrongdoing, so he lets the crowd decide which prisoner will receive his customary pardon during Jerusalem's Passover festival: Jesus or a notorious criminal named Barabbas (Pietro Sarubbi). The crowd picks Barabbas, and demand that Jesus be crucified. Pilate refuses, stating that he doesn't know what Jesus could have done that was deserving of a punishment that severe. To appease them, Pilate orders that Jesus be tortured by receiving a heavy scourging with a cat-o'-nine-tails before being freed. Even the beating isn't good enough for the crowd, so Pilate washes his hands of Jesus and sentences Him to death before turning Him over to the crowd. We enter the movie's third act as the near-dead Jesus is forced to carry an enormous cross through the streets of Jerusalem, a journey that ends with his execution on the hillside of Golgotha.

Bravo to Mel Gibson for having the balls to put his reputation as a filmmaker on the line by making a movie that reflected his convictions and beliefs. Most movies about Jesus usually just show His life and gloss over His death and resurrection, yet The Passion of the Christ shows the suffering He went through to pay reparations for humanity's iniquities. In a business where people worship at the altar of the Almighty Dollar, it's refreshing to see a movie that says something more than "I love money."

The Passion isn't about the cast or the cinematography or anything resembling a plot. Gibson's intent was to show the final day in the life of Christ (and by extent, Catholicism's fourteen stations of the cross) more realistically, in a way that it had never been shown before. Movies and artwork in the past depicted Jesus hanging on the cross with well-groomed hair and not a speck of dirt or blood on Him, almost looking like He was having a good time. The Passion, however, shows Him looking haggard, in agonizing pain and covered in dirt and gore. Most biblical movies also had everyone speaking English, and here, Gibson pushes the realism one step further by having all of the characters speak in Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew, without a single word of English dialogue.

As I said, the movie isn't about cinematography or acting, but since I'm here to review a movie, I might as well talk about its technical merits. The Passion is an extremely well made movie, and I applaud cinematographer Caleb Deschanel for his work. Every member of the cast was on their A-game here, and I applaud them as well. Jim Caviezel's performance as Jesus was a very sympathetic one, coming across as a man who was scared but willing to die for what he believed was right. And I was really creeped out by Rosalinda Celentano as Satan, who occasionally appears to make attempts at planting seeds of doubt in Christ's head. She (yes, she) gives Satan the needed creepy factor to make Cavaziel's "scared but sure" performance that much better. Also excellent was John Debney's musical score. During the third act especially, the score is very melancholy yet hopeful, and it is both gripping yet understated.

Sure, some could be sickened and turned off by the brutality of the movie, and come away feeling like they watched nothing more than a biblical snuff film. That's a very valid response to the film. I don't expect everyone that watches The Passion to break out into tears like some people or run to the nearest church as soon as the movie ends (though feel free to do either, if you so desire). In fact, the violence of the movie may not have the same effect on some that it has on others. Personally, after a lifetime of watching violent horror movies, I was rather desensitized to the violence, though there were several moments that made me flinch. But overall, I'll give The Passion of the Christ three stars. I don't see it as the five-star epic that others see it as, but it's still a good movie to watch as a companion piece to movies about the life of Jesus.

Final Rating: ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Ask a group of geeks to name a writer whose work they appreciate, and a good number of them will probably say Joss Whedon. His unique style has earned him a lot of respect over the years, but his greatest claim to fame has to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show debuted in 1997 on the WB Network, and over the course of seven seasons, it turned Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar into stars while becoming a pop culture powerhouse by inspiring novels, comic books, action figures, video games, and its own spinoff TV show.

But once upon a time, Buffy was not the pop culture juggernaut that it was at the end of the '90s. In the summer of 1992, 20th Century Fox introduced the world to the title character via her own motion picture, the existence of which I'm sure Whedon would love the world to forget. Instead of the dark yet ultra-witty Buffy that was popularized through the show, the movie is instead a goofy comedy that really bears no resemblance at all to the now-classic TV show that followed it.

Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) is your stereotypical early-90s Valley Girl. She's a dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader whose primary concerns are shopping, boys, and hanging out with her dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader friends. Her only goals in life are to "graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die." All that is brought to a screeching halt when she's confronted by Merrick (Donald Sutherland), who informs her that she is the next in a long line of young women chosen by destiny to kill vampires.

Naturally, she's skeptical. If some weird British guy came up to you and told you that you were destined to kill bloodsucking hell-spawn from beyond the grave, you'd probably think he was crazy too. Anyway, Merrick convinces Buffy that he's not some loony old man, and at his request, she accompanies him to the graveyard so he can explain this whole vampire slaying thing to her. Some vampires appear and get killed, and after some initial reluctance, Buffy begins to accept her role as a vampire slayer while Merrick assumes the role of her mentor.

Buffy eventually crosses paths with Pike (Luke Perry), a mechanic who looks like he's the reincarnation of James Dean circa Rebel Without A Cause. The two form a partnership after she rescues him from a gang of vampires, and when they chase a vampire into a stockyard full of parade floats, they encounter the vampire king Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his one-armed sidekick Amilyn (Paul Reubens). Merrick shows up and tries to prevent a Buffy/Lothos showdown, claiming that Buffy isn't ready to fight him yet. Lothos doesn't want to leave without fighting somebody, so he snatches Merrick's stake and stabs him in the heart with it. A vampire killing a guy with a tool intended to kill vampires, that's so poetic.

Buffy starts to back out of the slaying business after Merrick's death, but just when she thinks she's out, they pull her back in. Buffy and Pike share a moment at a high school dance when a posse of vampires crash the party. While Pike deals with the vamps wreaking havoc on the dance, Buffy heads for the school boiler room to duel with Lothos and Amilyn, a duel that leads to a final showdown between Buffy and Lothos on the dance floor.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an 86-minute joke that just isn't funny. The humor isn't funny, the horror isn't scary, and the acting is awful. Joss Whedon's original script was heavily rewritten, and if I were him, I'd have asked for an "Alan Smithee" credit. The jokes are mediocre at best (though I got a good laugh out of Amilyn's never-ending death throes at the end of the movie), and its attempts at horror fall flat. I figure I might as well just break my complaint down into more specific categories.

First up, the acting. The only real performances I actually enjoyed were Paul Reubens (who you may recognize as Pee Wee Herman) and David Arquette as Pike's vampire friend Benny. I wanted to get into Luke Perry's character, but he just kept giving off this weird "hey, remember me? I'm on 90210 and I'm so darn cool" vibe. If the movie was made now, it'd be a "hey, remember me? I was on 90210 and I'm a washed-up nobody now" vibe, but that's beside the point. Meanwhile, Kristy Swanson's ditzy Valley Girl routine was absolutely annoying, to the point where it was rough to watch the movie. The only good thing I can say about her is that after a while, Movie Buffy didn't seem as distant and self-important as Television Buffy.

And I think that Rutger Hauer and Donald Sutherland realized the potential the movie had to be awful, but had different stances on what to do. Sutherland downplays everything to the point where it seems like he's saying "this sucks, just give me my paycheck so I can leave." On the other hand, Hauer hams it up like crazy, hitting almost every possible villain cliché he can, right down to having a conversation with the hero when he has the chance for victory. I almost expected Reubens to pull a "Seth Green in Austin Powers" and say, "Look, let me get a gun and shoot her, and save us some time."

Usually, I comment on film scores, but Carter Burwell's score was nearly nonexistent. Not once do I remember hearing anything but dumb early-90s dance and pop/rock numbers. Outside of songs by Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, there really isn't any good music in the movie. Besides, who puts a Divinyls song in a movie and expects to be taken seriously? The Divinyls suck!

If you're looking to get into the "Buffyverse," you'd be well-advised to just avoid the movie and start with the first season of the TV show because it follows different rules than the movie (in the movie, vampires can fly and don't turn to dust when killed). However, the movie does have the novelty of featuring a Buffy that isn't Sarah Michelle Gellar. Overall, I'll give Buffy the Vampire Slayer two stars. Some cool moments, but other than that, it's just empty.

Final Rating: **

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2000)

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: almost every movie gets a sequel. Even movies you wouldn't expect to get a sequel probably get one. Possibly the most sequel-driven genre of all is the horror film. Just about every horror movie ever made has a sequel (or group of sequels), prequel, or knock-off. Even the most obscure foreign horror movie can get a sequel or two. Such was the case with the Canadian import Ginger Snaps. The tale of a pair of sisters whose tightly-knit familial bonds are tested when one becomes a werewolf, it became a cult classic upon its release in 2000. It was only a matter of time until the sequel was made, and that sequel came in the form of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.

Picking up sometime after the events of the first Ginger Snaps, Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) is on the run from a werewolf looking to mate with her. Infected with the lycanthropy virus and haunted by recurring visions of her dead sister Ginger (Katherine Isabelle), she has managed to slow down her transformation with a daily series of monkshood injections. After a particularly strong dose of monkshood and an extremely close escape from the werewolf, Brigitte passes out in the street and awakens in an all-girls drug rehabilitation facility. Facility supervisor Alice (Janet Kidder) confiscates her monkshood, and without steady injections, Brigitte's transformation into a werewolf begins to speed up.

Among the encounters with Alice and a shady male nurse named Tyler (Eric Johnson), Brigitte is befriended by an eccentric girl nicknamed "Ghost" (Tatiana Maslany). Unlike the other girls, Ghost gets to roam the grounds freely because she's keeping her grandmother company while she recovers from severe third-degree burns in another section of the facility. While Ghost is antagonized by the various rehab patients because of her odd behavior (her obsession with comics often leads her to speak like a comic-style prose), she and Brigitte become a close-knit pair, much to Brigitte's initial reluctance.

When Brigitte discovers the horny werewolf from earlier has found the clinic, Ghost helps Brigitte escape, and together they head to Ghost's grandmother's house for refuge. Ghost discovers that Brigitte is turning into a werewolf herself, and tries to help her new friend delay the transformation. Of course, things don't always go as they're planned. The male werewolf finds them once again, and Brigitte's tenuous grip on both her sanity and her humanity begins to slip away as the lycanthropy overtakes her.

It's very hard to have a sequel that's up to the same par as its predecessor. The list of "better than or equal to" sequels isn't exactly long. Ginger Snaps 2 isn't an equal to the original Ginger Snaps, but it's close. A lot of its quality is helped by the acting ability of its star. Emily Perkins is great as the would-be werewolf Brigitte, and she carries the whole movie on her shoulders. While she had Katherine Isabelle sharing the spotlight in the original Ginger Snaps, she does all the grunt work here. The Brigitte character pulls a transformation akin to Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, and Perkins pulls it off believably with her impressive performance.

Tatiana Maslani also puts in a decent performance, giving off a creepy vibe which is really fitting for the character by the end of the movie. Maslani does what she can with what she's given, but the character gets really annoying at times. I can only handle hearing her talk in prose so many times before I just want to reach through the TV screen and strangle her. I did, however, enjoy Katherine Isabelle's appearances as Ginger. I loved her in the original Ginger Snaps, and though she didn't have much screen time, I loved her here as Brigitte's ghostly anti-conscience.

Also good were the special effects by KNB EFX Group. I've been a fan of KNB's work for a long time, and I appreciated their work here. Unfortunately, a lot of their best stuff is hidden by insanely quick flashes. A hummingbird couldn't see most of their work. However, the visible effects were great, especially Brigitte's facial makeup near the end of the movie. Kurt Swinghammer's score was also good. I preferred Michael Shields's score from the original Ginger Snaps, but Ginger Snaps 2 has a different tone that requires a different score. The industrial/techno-esque stuff really worked, and I absolutely loved Swinghammer's reprisal of the original's theme. My only real complaint with the movie (other than Ghost being so annoying) was Megan Martin's script. It wasn't bad as a whole, but a boring stretch in the second act and some cheesy dialogue are big knocks against it.

Ginger Snaps 2 tries hard, and can call itself a success. A lot of sequels are just retreads or remakes of its predecessor, but this one takes a different step and I commend it for that. I give it three and a half stars; no more, no less. I'll recommend to fans of the first one and fans of werewolf movies, but viewers would serve well to watch both movies back-to-back.

Final Rating: ***½