Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed is a 2004 Canadian horror film. The film is a sequel to 2000 film Ginger Snaps and the second installment in the Ginger Snaps series, written by Megan Martin and directed by Brett Sullivan. A prequel, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, was filmed back-to-back with Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed and was also released in 2004. John Fawcett, director of the first film, was the executive producer.

Plot
Brigitte Fitzgerald has contracted lycanthropy; her sister, Ginger, was afflicted in the first film, and Brigitte was forced to help kill her. Brigitte injects monkshood extract to control her transformations, tries to disguise her condition and keeps a diary detailing the progress of the disease. Ginger appears to her as an apparition to warn her that monkshood is not a cure.

While under the influence of the injections, Brigitte senses a male werewolf has been stalking her. Preparing to flee, she accidentally overdoses and collapses in the snow. A friend tries to help, but is mauled by the stalking werewolf.

Brigitte wakes in a rehab clinic. She pleads unsuccessfully to be released. Alice, the clinic director, believes she is a drug addict. Tyler, a worker at the clinic, offers to trade monkshood for sexual favors but Brigitte refuses; the disease causes her to crave sex and violence, which exacerbate the transformations.

Ghost, a little girl who frequents the clinic to visit her severely burned grandmother, follows Brigitte everywhere and discovers her secret. Instead of being horrified, Ghost is thrilled to meet a werewolf. Ghost helps Brigitte disguise her disease and tries to smuggle monkshood to her, but Tyler intervenes. In despair at her rate of transformation, Brigitte begs Tyler to handle her injections.

The male werewolf tracks Brigitte to the clinic and kills a dog. Brigitte and Ghost escape through air vents, reach the basement, and exit through the crematorium, but encounter the other werewolf. Brigitte is mauled, her leg broken and her chest punctured. Her wounds heal quickly and she and Ghost escape through the furnace, dousing their pursuer in gasoline and setting him on fire.

Ghost drives them to her grandmother's cabin. She explains that her grandmother, Barbara, was burned when she fell asleep with a lighted cigarette.

Brigitte struggles with her animal urges and almost eats a deer that is killed by one of Ghost's boobytraps. They arrange a meeting with Tyler to procure more monkshood. Before Tyler arrives, Brigitte finds a fresh victim of the werewolf. The girls and Tyler retreat to the cabin. Tyler injects the monkshood, but Brigitte's body rejects it and she goes into convulsions. Tyler calls Alice.

Ghost lies to Brigitte that Tyler abused her while Brigitte was unconscious. Brigitte locks him outside and the werewolf kills him. When Alice arrives, Ghost mistakes her for the werewolf and shoots her non-fatally. Brigitte finds evidence that Barbara was not a smoker. She violently confronts Ghost, who admits that she tried to kill Barbara by setting her on fire.

Alice retreats to the attic when the werewolf breaks into the cabin. Brigitte, almost fully a werewolf, stabs the intruder. They struggle and fall through a boobytrap into the basement. The werewolf is impaled. Ghost kills Alice with a hammer. Brigitte, weakened from the struggle, tries to climb back upstairs. Ghost locks her in the basement. Ghost sets about repairing the cabin and fantasizes that she is a supernatural warrior with a pet werewolf that she sends against her enemies.

Cast

 * Emily Perkins as Brigitte Fitzgerald
 * Tatiana Maslany as Ghost
 * Eric Johnson as Tyler
 * Janet Kidder as Alice Severson
 * Brendan Fletcher as Jeremy
 * Katharine Isabelle as Ginger Fitzgerald
 * Susan Adam as Barbara
 * Chris Fassbender as Luke
 * Pascale Hutton as Beth-Ann
 * Michelle Beaudoin as Winnie
 * David McNally as Marcus
 * Patricia Idlette as Dr. Brookner

Release
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed was released in Canadian theaters on 30 January 2004, and Lionsgate released it on home video in the United States on 13 April 2004.

Reception
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 88% of 17 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 6.6/10. Dennis Harvey of Variety wrote that it "keeps most cliches at bay, and actually is less formulaic, even if storytelling and [performances] remain uneven." Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail wrote, "Though less original and satiric than the original, and more decorated with gore and prank scares, the movie maintains the previous film's mordant tone." Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting rated it 2.5/5 stars and called it "a major letdown" that "is an enjoyable film, yet nothing to get all psyched about."

Ernest Mathijs, in his book John Fawcett's Ginger Snaps, wrote that the sequel is "more radical and nihilist". He identifies the major themes as self-harm, drug addiction, and deconstruction of the themes explored in the first film.