Quick content warning, just like the movies, this topic will have mentions of incest, murder, sex, etc. I'm keeping it PG but if that stuff squicks you out, this is not the thread for you.
Since I'm a huge fan of these Ginger Snaps and don't see a thread about it already, I figured I'd open one and ask everyone else what it is they love about the trilogy :)
Personally I love how dark they are and how John Fawcett and Karen Walton didn't really shy away from the monstrosity of the werewolf trope.
I find it very interesting how Ginger Snaps is often paired up with Jennifer's Body in modern day, even though I very much enjoy both, I just think they serve two entirely different purposes? Ginger Snaps is like a love letter to the entire horror genre and to monster movies, and even though Jennifer's Body is also an amazing movie, it skews wayyyyy more towards comedy than horror. So it's fascinating how they both get held up as pillars of "girl horror" despite being vastly different in their intent and production.
I'm also interested in how it being turned into cult classic iconography for gen z has coincided with the dulling of the material. I frequently run into fans my age, or younger, who either don't notice the incestuous tones of the films at all, or openly ridicule them for being disgusting. But that's... the point?
It seems that there's a lot of people who believe that the presence of taboo topics inherently equates to the endorsement of those topics, so they'd rather just ignore the presence of them entirely (which, imo, is a little hypocritical?) rather than engage with them as the audience is intended to.
Because the incest in these movies is far from glamorized! It's meant to be disgusting, it's meant to make your skin crawl. And it's such a well-thought perversion of the "sisterhood" that is depicted in a lot of movies. The writers do a really good job of tearing Brigitte apart between her feelings of obligation towards Ginger, and her feelings of Ginger being competition in a world that views women as objects to be desired and claimed. How do you cope with the knowledge that your sister, who has been your other half for 15 years, the only person in the world who really understands you, is being "taken" from you by a man? And what about the jealousy you feel about the fact that she wants it? Wants more than for her life to just be the two of you, like she always promised? And how disgusting does that make you feel?
There's just a lot of meaningful topics in these films (puberty ofc, but also sexual desires, sexual assault and misogyny, co-dependency) that, in my opinion, are the entire draw of the movies! They would not be half as interesting without these topics! Yet a lot of fans seem completely incurious and sometimes downright dismissive about them, because analyzing them would require more thought than, "werewolves cool," or "teen girl horror #girlboss," and I honestly find it kind of annoying. I feel like they're not giving this franchise anywhere near the credit it really deserves for being a horror masterpiece! It's not like the message of the movie is, "kill your sister's boyfriend! that's cool and good! she won't be mad about that at all!"
And this is not even getting into the second (which I think is even better than the first) or third (I'm meh about but I understand why others like it) movies, since I don't want this to be too long, but. I wanted to open a discussion about this because I find it so bewildering. Why be a fan of a horror movie if you find the actual themes of the film so disgusting that you refuse to even acknowledge them? Have y'all noticed fans like this? What do you think about them? Or, just tell me your thoughts about these movies in general. Literally infodump, PLEASE, I'm so open to hearing it. I feel like I so rarely see discussion about these movies that doesn't come down to how cool the outfits are or how hot the actors were