In my perpetual quest to find werewolf movies that are not utter tripe, I stumbled across Ginger Snaps. I didn't know quite what to expect from a film with such an unconventional name. I got the "snaps" part (you know, wolves snap at people) but not the Ginger part.

Ginger, as it turns out, is Ginger Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle), a sulky goth chick preteen who is about to become a teen in a hurry. Her younger sister is Brigitte (Emily Perkins), who hides behind her hair. This dark duo, shades of Ghost World, enjoys staging gory death scenes and photographing them for art class. The girls are pros at it too, and the photographs we see plastered over their basement apartment are simultaneously disturbing and amusing.

The two girls are the daughters of Henry (John Bourgeois) and Pamela (Mimi Rogers). It's telling that the girls live in the basement together. They have a lot of freedom, a result of the parental strife going on upstairs.

As a young male, I remember coming back from junior high to high school and suddenly noticing that certain girls had blossomed into vivacious women. I wasn't the only one who noticed either. Ginger Snaps takes the perspective of the girls going through puberty, most specifically from Brigitte who is the younger of the two sisters. But of course, puberty just wouldn't be the same without a little lycanthropy.

As Ginger puts to the school nurse: "I've got hair in places I didn't before, I'm having weird urges, and there's a lot of blood." Sounds like a typical teen, right?

And that's what makes Ginger Snaps such an excellent film. It's not about werewolves. It's not about the usual blarney about how a werewolf is a man's inner beast. We've seen all that before. Yeah, men have the capacity for horrible violence. We see it so much in the movies now that it's hard to get upset about it.

Transposing the angst of puberty into a parable for lycanthropy is a brilliant stroke. We watch in horror as Ginger hurdles towards hot chick status: she wears tight-fitting clothes, starts wearing makeup, and goes after the boys. She's becoming a woman and a werewolf at the same time. It's only through the lens of a horror movie that we understand the horrors of womanhood. And by horrors, I mean blood. Lots and lots of it. Menstrual blood, people blood, blood dripping from mouths, guts torn open (mostly dogs).

Throughout, the film stays true to its roots as a teen horror that's about teens. They curse, they smoke pot, they ogle each other, and sometimes they're just plain mean. Now imagine all those traits in a werewolf driven by hormonal rages that replace lust with rage, with the superhuman strength to back it up…and you have Ginger Snaps.

Ginger finally does snap, despite her sister's best efforts to restrain her. Brigitte allies with the drug dealer (Sam, played by Kris Lemche) whose van killed the original werewolf to manufacture a cure, but Ginger's changes go well beyond vamping into weird territory when she starts growing a tail. And then the hunger starts and somebody dies.

The acting is superb, the music appropriate, the special effects up to par without using CGI. Every actor pulls their weight admirably. The parents act like concerned but clueless adults and the daughters act like angry, sarcastic teens.

I often reference how movies sometimes fail to stay true to the characters. This is another way of saying that happy endings should never be forced. Ginger Snaps never shies away from the stark realities of broken homes, social pressures, or biological changes. The ending is harsh but appropriate.

"Out by sixteen or dead in this scene but together forever," swear the two girls over and over before the changes begin. They never had a chance.