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Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

  • ️Fri May 08 2015

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (Film)

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004) is the prequel to Ginger Snaps.

Fort Bailey is a remote fur-trading lodge in the Canadian wilderness. In the autumn of 1815, thirty-six members of the garrison left to collect supplies for the winter... and never returned. A month later, three dozen Werewolves show up and besiege the fort. Into this situation stumble Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald (the Regency-era counterparts, and possible ancestors, of the Ginger and Brigitte from the first two movies), who are given shelter in Fort Bailey.

But as the Werewolves close in, tensions rise in the fort as the garrison starts infighting, and many of them have prejudices, flaws, or secrets that could doom them all.

This film contains examples of:

  • Anachronism Stew: Some of the muskets shown in the movie are cap-locks, the percussion caps clearly visible to the camera. Percussion caps weren't invented until 1820 (five years after the movie is set), only flintlock muskets would have been available in 1815.
  • Bear Trap: Brigitte's leg gets caught in one at the beginning of the movie, so she's brought to Fort Bailey for medical attention.
  • Bittersweet Ending The movie ends with Brigitte, after being given the chance to kill Ginger and end the Curse, choosing instead to join Ginger as a werewolf, fulfilling their oath to be "together, forever" and presumably doom generation after generation of reincarnations to the fates they suffered in the first movie. It's the closest thing to a happy ending that the series got.
  • Burn the Witch!: Attempted by Reverend Gilbert, who decides to burn Brigitte at the stake because he blames her for the Werewolf siege. Almost promptly subverted when Wallace takes offense to the Reverend bad-mouthing his late-wife, so he stabs the Reverend in the gut and then sets him on fire.
  • Call-Forward: The old First Nations woman gives Ginger and Brigitte the matching bird-skull necklaces from the first movie.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Subverted to a degree with Ginger, but played straight with Brigitte. This incarnation of Ginger has more scruples, engages in none of the depravity and possessiveness that characterized her modern counterpart, and she's still more or less herself when the film ends. As a result, this incarnation of Brigitte is never put in conflict with her and plays a more passive role in the story. However, Ginger once again embraces the curse when it takes hold, and this time Brigitte damns herself to propagate it rather than kill Ginger to survive.
  • Don't Go in the Woods: It abounds with countless werewolves.
  • Driven to Suicide: Wallace commits suicide after losing everything and everyone and sinking to worse depths before the werewolves overrun the fort.
  • Dwindling Party: One by one characters are killed off until only the sisters remain.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: The Hunter has an evil-detecting wolfdog.
  • Eye Scream: They identity one of the dead werewolves as a former team member by cutting out his glass eye.
  • Hate Sink:
    • Reverend Gilbert is shown throughout to be a fire and brimstone preacher of Fort Bailey, expressing vehement racist views in his sermons, blaming Native Americans and interracial marriages for the presence of werewolves — even though they were brought over from Europe. A particular target of his ire is his leader Wallace Rowlands for his marriage to a "savage" woman. Taking an immediate disdain for the Fitzgerald sisters for being a "temptation", Gilbert tries to have them killed by a werewolf and later tries to burn Brigitte alive, denouncing her as a witch.
    • James is an arrogant, thuggish, and racist Sargent of Fort Bailey who regularly bullies everyone around him. Over the course of the film, he leaves one of his soldiers to be ripped apart by werewolves, attempts to rape Brigitte, throws a mixed race boy out of Fort Bailey to die after his father's death, and tries to batter Ginger herself when she shows up to rescue Brigitte.
  • Hollywood Tactics: Despite there being a gaping hole in the wall in the back of the fort, only two Werewolves ever bother to sneak in that way, the rest of them mounting frontal assault after frontal assault on the front gate. Ginger and Brigitte end up using the hole as a sally-port to sneak into and out of the fort, bypassing the siege.
  • Incest Subtext: It’s pretty heavily implied that Brigette and Ginger ran away from their family and had to brave the Canadian wilderness in winter because of their unnaturally close sibling relationship. Word of God in the DVD commentary says that they did more than run away; they apparently killed their parents.
  • In the Hood: A hooded cloak provides Ginger with a striking new look, and helps obfuscate the signs of infection.
  • I Surrender, Suckers!: The climax of the movie begins with Ginger entering the fort to rescue her sister, only to be beaten by James and the two surviving guards. On the ropes, Ginger curls up against the wall and asks James to lean forward to listen to a secret. After Ginger tells her secret, the Werewolves are heard howling, and while James is distracted, Ginger claws his throat open. Ginger then gets up and pulls the doors of the fort open, letting all the Werewolves in.
  • Jerkass: Wallace, James, and Reverend Gilbert can all be quite aggressive, judgmental, cold, and just flat out unpleasant at times. The same is true of Claude and Cormac once they start following James more in the second half (although the worst Cormac does is knock down a woman they know has been infected).
  • Magical Native American: The elderly First Nations woman. At the beginning of the movie she gives the two Fitzgerald sisters matching bird-skull necklaces, and warns them to "Kill the Boy". Later in the movie, she gives Brigitte drugs to have a prophetic vision.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Wallace gives one to Reverend Gilbert, after the latter bad-mouths Wallace's late wife, and as Wallace stabs him in the chest.

    Wallace: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned".

  • Prophecy Twist: In defiance of the folktale Claude relates, the Seer reveals that it wouldn't have mattered if Ginger, afflicted by the curse, had brought herself to kill Geoffrey; she was doomed the moment it entered her veins.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: All the frontiersmen and natives are dead and Fort Bailey is burned to the ground, but the sisters walk away with their lives... and the werewolf curse.
  • Sinister Minister: Reverend Gilbert is an obnoxious and bigoted Anglican vicar, who is casually racist against First Nations people, and disparages interracial marriages unprovoked. At one point he blames the Werewolf siege on interracial marriage, and at another he blames it on the Fitzgerald sisters (going so far as to have Brigitte burned at the stake over it). Wallace ends up killing Gilbert himself, after the Reverend badmouths Wallace's late wife one time too many.
  • The Siege: The main plotline of the film is Fort Bailey being besieged by a pack of Werewolves. Neither the garrison nor the Werewolves survive the final assault, but the garrison technically "wins" because Wallace and the Hunter- who are Driven to Suicide and murdered by Brigitte, respectively- are the last two standing.
  • Supporting the Monster Loved One: Wallace is found to have kept his son Geoffrey in a locked cell near his old bedroom.
  • Take a Third Option: The Hunter tells Brigitte that there are two options: kill Ginger and end the curse, or be killed by Ginger and doom the New World to be plagued by werewolves forever. At the end, Brigitte decides on a third option: she kills the Hunter and leaves with Ginger, willingly offering her arm to her sister to bite so that the two of them can be "together forever".
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: After spending almost the entire movie being blamed for everyone else's problems, demonized as witches and monsters, and told to kill each other, Ginger and Brigitte decide to betray Fort Bailey. Ginger opens the gates for the Werewolves and personally invites them into the fort, while Brigitte murders the Hunter.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Hunter is willing to kill Ginger in order to break the werewolf curse forever, and it's hard to argue with his reasoning.
  • Werewolf Kennel: After his son Geoffrey was bitten by a Werewolf, Wallace opted to lock his son in one instead of just killing him. This ultimately backfires when Ginger inadvertently sets him loose.
  • Wendigo: What the natives call the werewolves. Claude the Frenchman calls them the Loup-Garou.