More Grotesque and Disgusting than Scary
This SHOUT! Factory Collector's release really looks great. Video quality is excellent to outstanding. The film itself is dark, neither frightening nor disturbing but instead dark and dreary. Yes, there are ample amounts of gore and violence, but this is overshadowed by the sisters who are morbidly obsessed by a longing to exit life early. No credible explanation is provided for it, yet Ginger and Brigitte have walked arm-in-arm to this dark place. Brigitte does not wish to die but she is determined to stick close to Ginger come-what-may. And in Ginger's final moments, Brigitte stays with her until Ginger draws her last breath into her grotesque werewolf form. In some psychologically distorted way, Brigitte may be a heroine in this film.
Why this movie is grotesque is the way the filmmakers associate female puberty and the animal or feral aspect of human nature. It isn't the first horror film to do this. The 1976 version of Carrie made the correlation of puberty with the supernatural during the opening titles. Stephen King got this idea from an article he read in a newspaper and made it the premise in his novel. Here, Ginger's ravenous appetite for sex upon reaching puberty is overcome by her thirst for the kill, overcome by the beast in all of us. Ginger's dripping of her own menses on the school floors, making them slippery with blood, is a very disgusting device. The filmmakers are overemphasizing and are being unduly graphic about the relationship between the periodicity of menstruation and the lunar cycle of werewolves. As I said above, Ginger is the one who has the bizarre psychosis with her own femininity. It's peculiar because unlike Carrie White, whose impassioned mother had a lot to do with her being socially maladjusted, Ginger and Brigitte are the children of normal middle class or upper middle class parents who gave them a great deal of latitude--they were free to take up their own interests, pick their friends, form their own opinions, etc. I don't believe that the filmmakers are trying to get their viewers to care about these two, not that it's required of them necessarily. It's just a lot easier to feel indifference for them. To like them one must accept or empathize somehow with their self-absorption and their general malcontent toward everything.
This horror film doesn't make sense and as a visual medium it is revolting.
I would rate this film 1/5. Overall, 3/5 for the excellent transfer from SHOUT! Factory.
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