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Ernest Mathijs. John Fawcett's Ginger Snaps, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. 143 pp. Softcover. ISBN 978-1-4426-1567-0. $16.57.
Ernest Mathijs's earlier work, The Cinema of David Cronenberg (2008), presented a meticulous overview of Cronenberg's films notable for its sheer attention to detail. In his new book on the hit Canadian weregrrl film Ginger Snaps, directed by John Fawcett (2000), one will find a similar painstaking attention to detail as Mathijs examines the film effectively from multiple angles. If you were not previously aware of Ginger Snaps and its status as a cult horror film, you will be intimately familiar with it by the time you close this book. And, despite knowing all about it, you'll still really want to see Ginger Snaps, thanks to Mathijs's humorous, accessible writing style and the enthusiasm for the film he evinces on every page.
The book is comprised of four short chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue. The prologue explains Mathijs's key argument that Ginger Snaps is "best approached as a cult film: ambiguous in its anatomy and fractured in its receptions" by drawing attention to the ways in which it mingles "snarky sarcasm" and intertextual allusions to other horror films with straightforward horror (6, 4). Although Mathijs does not employ Philip Brophy's useful concept of "horrality" ("horror, textuality, morality, hilarity,"), such a concept immediately springs to mind. In his analysis, Mathijs indicates that more "traditional" approaches, such as "a feminist interpretation," form only part of the film's "crossover cult appeal," and these approaches therefore constitute the structural divisions of the book (7). The film's central feminist concerns, however, whether or not they qualify as "traditional"-an odd description of feminism, surely-suffer somewhat from such compartmentalization, and important aspects of the film are consequently overlooked.
In the first chapter, "Wolfer Grrls" (the title of which refers to the working title of what would eventually become Ginger Snaps), Mathijs focuses upon the genesis and funding of the project. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with all involved in the film's production, Mathijs positions the film within an intricate web of influences, from the up-and-coming creative talent at the Canadian Film Centre, to cinematic predecessors such as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Girl, Interrupted (1999). Mathijs shows how the influences...