Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
The Rubber Motel
A hopelessly B-grade production; it's notable only for following in the Buffy tradition of analogizing teenage problems to the supernatural, though with even less subtlety. The first half of the film emphasises menstruation to such an extent -- it's like a high-school health lesson -- that it's impossible to miss the implied connection between monthly full-moon transformations and monthly bleeding. Indeed, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is bitten by a werewolf at -- wait for the amazing coincidence -- the same time as she gets her first period.
It's confusing, then, given the early emphasis, that this oh-so-clever link is soon subsumed into a fuzzy analogy with puberty in general. Lycanthropy is eventually revealed to be a bacterial infection with no connection to any sort of cycle; it's used to shoe-horn in drug use, unprotected sex -- lycanthropy as STD -- and hormones in general. Ginger begins to exhibit physical changes, becomes interested in boys and so on, in the process isolating herself from her still-prepubescent sister. This does lead to some good lines -- "I get this ache... And I, I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything to fucking pieces." -- but it's a troubling transformation. Not only because it's shallow and clicéd, but because it marks the first downturn in what was, initially, an interesting and innovative script.
It isn't long before the killing starts, at which point the degeneration into mindless horror is essentially complete. Several deaths and a little too much Blair Witch-esque crouching in the dark later, it's over. There are still some interesting twists, notably in the final sequence and in the character of the mother, but the initial promise of a Cronenbergian exploration of the body is entirely wasted.
It's doubly unfortunate that the final third, already weak thematically, should have to suffer so much by its special effects. Werewolves are notoriously difficult to get right, either by animation or animatronics, and Ginger Snaps is no exception. The creature is too ridiculous to take seriously, and it drags the rest of the already-shaky production down with it into the abyss of mediocrity.