Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed (2003)

Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed is a 2003 Canadian horror sequel to Ginger Snaps, written by Megan Martin and directed by Brett Sullivan. A prequel, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning , was filmed back-to-back with Ginger Snaps II and released in 2003.

Plot
Set several months after the events of the first film, runaway teenager Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins ) uses an extract of Monkshood to fight the effects of the lycanthropy that transformed her sister into a werewolf and is now affecting her.

The opening credits play over Brigitte shaving the hair all over her body, cutting her arm with a scalpel, then injecting herself with a dose of Monkshood, then cutting to Brigitte in a library, where the librarian Jeremy (Brendan Fletcher ) clumsily hits on her. When she goes to check out her books, her library card has too many overdue fines, and she walks out, leaving the books behind.

Back in her motel room, she inspects her latest cut and report the time and state of healing on a page filled with similar entries. Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), her late sister, appears to her as an apparition, saying that she is healing faster and the Monkshood is not a cure. It only slows the transformation.

Brigitte shoots a deadly second dose of Monkshood, and immediately after, Brigitte senses the presence of the male werewolf that has been stalking her, whose identity is unknown. She hastily packs and opens the door to find Jeremy with her library books. However, the additional dose has pushed her into toxic shock. Jeremy gets her into his car and is about to take her to a hospital, when the driver's side window is smashed, and the werewolf drags him from the car. Brigitte stumbles down the street and collapses in the snow.

She wakes up in a building which is a combination of a rehab clinic for drug abusing girls and chronic care patient facility, located in the only operational section of a large, old hospital. She attempts, but fails to escape. When delivered to the clinic's director, Alice (Janet Kidder ), she pleads to be released but is refused. She does, however, manage to palm a piece of glass so she can continue to measure her healing rate. Tyler (Eric Johnson ), a worker at the clinic, visits Brigitte at night and offers her some Monkshood in exchange for sexual favors. She refuses and he tells her he will not give her the Monkshood until she agrees to his terms.

As Brigitte's healing begins to accelerate, so does her rate of transformation. Ginger's ghost continues to appear, taunting Brigitte as she experiences growing cravings for sex, and to kill, as Ginger did previously. During a group therapy session, Brigitte daydreams about being instructed to lie on the floor and masturbate, however it is unclear if the masturbation was a fantasy, since the part about death and blood is clearly on Brigitte's mind. Suddenly jolted back to reality by a vision of Ginger, she draws her hand to her face to reveal her palm covered in hair. Later, and very depressed, she takes the shard of glass and holds it to her throatwhile looking into the bathroom mirror. However, she does not kill herself.

During this time, Brigitte is shadowed by a little girl named Ghost (Tatiana Maslany ), the granddaughter of Barbara, a severe burn victim who is a patient there. Ghost eavesdrops on Alice in the staff lounge that Brigitte injects Monkshood. Curious about it, Ghost goes through her clandestinely hidden comic book collection and realizes Brigitte's secret. Ghost slips Brigitte a comic book containing the werewolf story. She begins to question Brigitte's lycanthropy, and notices her ears have begun to grow pointy, Brigitte takes the glass, telling Ginger that she will not die, cuts off the pointed tip, and flushes it down the toilet. Shortly after, Ghost tries to slip Brigitte some Monkshood, but is caught by Tyler. The following night, in despair at her rate of transformation, Brigitte allows Tyler to inject her.

By now, it is apparent that the werewolf following Brigitte has found her again. After Ghost's dog is found dead and mutilated, Brigitte asks her where the corpse was found, and is told that it was found in the disused crematorium section of the hospital. Upon learning this, Brigitte says she must get out. Ghost offers to show her an escape route, but insists she be taken with.

Brigitte escapes to the disused crematorium, in the basement, by crawling through air vents following Ghost's trail marks. There, Brigitte meets Beth-Ann (Pascale Hutton ), who is high on drugs she received in exchange for sex with Tyler. Beth-Ann is killed and dragged away by the werewolf. Shortly after, Ghost arrives and says the escape route is where Beth-Ann was dragged away to. Brigitte and Ghost proceed, but are separated as the werewolf attacks. Clashing with the beast, Brigitte's leg is broken, but her transformation is so advanced, she heals instantly, and makes her escape after burning the beast in the crematorium.

Ghost drives them to a gas station in the clinic car, where Brigitte tends to her wounds. They then drive to Barbara's house and sleep. Ghost explains how Barbara got burned, she tells Brigitte that Barbara fell asleep with her bedtime cigarette. The next day, after Brigitte starts eating a deer caught in an explosion from a trap set up by ghost, they arrange for Tyler to bring Monkshood to the gas station, but when Brigitte wanders inside she discovers the attendant had been slain. While she was away, Tyler had arrived and taken Ghost's car. Brigitte dashes back and drives off. Back at the house, Brigitte's body once more begins to reject the Monkshood and Tyler worriedly calls Alice.

Ghost tricks Brigitte into thinking Tyler abused her. Brigitte locks Tyler outside, and he is killed by the werewolf. Alice arrives, and is attacked by Ghost, wielding Barbara's hunting rifle, by accident. Brigitte figures out that Barbara didn't smoke, aggressively pins Ghost to a wall and argues with her, realizing that it is likely Tyler didn't abuse her and Barbara was burned by Ghost, but is stopped by Alice holding the rifle point-blank to the back of her skull. Alice begins to take Ghost, but is advised to not go outside. The werewolf then howls and breaks a nearby window, and Alice takes Ghost to the attic and seeks refuge from Brigitte and the wolf. Brigitte's transformation is almost complete, when the wolf enters the house. She lures him into a room, and when Ghost distracts the wolf by dropping a heavy curling stone, she stabs him. The wolf bites her arm. They struggle and after she repeatedly bashes its head in with the curling stone, they fall into the basement, which had been turned into a pit of death using a set of matress springs holding a wide variety of sharp objects. Ghost hits Alice in the head with a hammer and sits at the top of the steps leading to the basement, gun in hand. Brigitte crawls up the stairs, her face half transformed, begging Ghost to kill her. She instead locks Brigitte in the basement.

Ghost is shown illustrating a comic page about herself as a powerful warrior with a werewolf pet. Ghost narrates that Brigitte is getting stronger in the basement and is waiting to be unleashed on Ghost's enemies. As the film ends, Ghost is getting ready to welcome Barbara home as the fully transformed Brigitte-Wolf is heard growling from the basement.

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.