I recently re-watched the slowly growing classic “Ginger Snaps” and while the re-watch quality hasn’t been kind to it, it’s still a damn good werewolf film. What “Ginger Snaps 2” does is offer a much different approach to the story which may or may not bode well with audiences. You can say whatever you want about this sequel, but in the end you can’t call it repetitive or prosaic. It’s a completely different sort of concept and narrative yet manages to extend the story from the first which is what a sequel should be. One of my many ever recurring complaints about film is that sequels always tend to repeat the first film instead of extend or add on to the original story told, and “Ginger Snaps 2” doesn’t fall prey to that trap. In the end, it’s ultimately not better than the first film, or even the sub-par final film, but it still ends up being an engrossing piece of werewolf fodder that adds to the mythos and does away with the werewolf/period allegory and presents a more upfront premise.
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Godsend (2004)
“Godsend” starts off well enough. It begins with a concept so controversial that used to be the fodder for science fiction but now has become a startling reality: cloning. It’s an issue that has become the topic of heated debate for the modern age and this film has the ability and chance to comment on such a topic. “Godsend” starts off just right, but it quickly becomes a really awful film with such a ridiculous concept, it’s doesn’t even achieve the status of being laughably bad. It’s god-awful, as the joke goes. Every character is so dumb, and every aspect so derivative, that it’s just a mess from beginning to end.
The Girl Next Door (2004)
I actually liked this movie. It won’t win awards, and I will not spend any money on it, but for a good time I suggest you check this out. If you’re a guy. Usually the casting of a hot girl to distract me never works, but here, looking at Elisha Cuthbert, I just couldn’t help but dismiss the flaws. And there were plenty of flaws. Elisha Cuthbert is really hot. She has this amazing face and unbelievable body, she’s just not human, and that was the saving grace for me with this movie. Watching her parade herself back and forth was amazing and she won me over completely. And then there’s Timothy Olyphant who plays sleazy porno director Kelly, who proves to be quite an obstacle and nemesis for Hirsch’s character. Olyphant is entertainingly over the top in this film, with all the usual clichés with spiky hair, a menacing grim, and sleaze galore.
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)
What I really liked about this movie is it managed to take a clever satirical horror film with a twist and add some lore and depth to it. Whether or not “Ginger Snaps” needed to progress beyond the first movie is open for argument, but this film does manage to add some creative and some times engrossing lore to the whole “ginger snaps” story with a similar tale being told in the past century, and it kept me interested the whole way through until the dynamite conclusion. Two sisters traveling abroad the Canadian country side, Ginger and Bridgette, travel through the forest horseback and get lost. When Bridgette accidentally gets caught in a bear trap, Ginger goes to look for help but they’re discovered by a Native American hunter and taken to a local fortress where they’re taken in by a group of soldiers awaiting orders and supplies.
Garden State (2004) (DVD)
I like Zach Braff a lot, so when “Garden State” came around, I took a chance and made a blind buy (buying without having seen the film) on the DVD, and, not surprisingly, I wasn’t disappointed, as a matter of fact I was shocked at how utterly accomplished Braff has become. “Garden State” is further proof to why “Scrubs” is such an underrated mistreated property. Directed by, written by, and starring Braff, he plays twenty – something out of work actor Andrew Largeman, a young man whose sleepwalking his way through a heavily medicated life of hazy dreams and meaningless benign events of monotony and routine and basically doesn’t know where it all is ending or beginning for him through his work as a pretend Asian man. And his medicine cabinet stacked through the brim with anti-depressants.
The Grudge (2004)
The remake of “Ju-On” now called (sigh) “The Grudge” is the perfect example of faulty westernization in which the translated work suffers in the translation and completely misses the point of the original. The original had the surprise ending which makes you re-assert your thoughts on the characters, while the remake has the “You thought the monster was dead, but its not!” ending that I yawned at.
Gothika (2003)
“Gothika” is never sure if it wants to be a supernatural thriller, a psychological thriller or a murder mystery, and that’s pretty difficult to discern through the clichés and obvious plot devices given to the audience non-stop. Every bit of scenery is murky, dim, dull, bland, and dreary to create the effect of suspense, and while scenery matters with setting a mood in horror films, it’s also up to the director to set it, and here it seems the director relies only on scenery, scenery that is so predictable and hard to swallow. There’s the dark and stormy night (check), the cheap shocks that will presumably keep the audience more annoyed than actually scared (check), the very loud score intent on keep the audience in suspense when nothing follows (check!), especially in one really stupid moment where Berry’s character etches her way down a dark basement, and as she opens the door, the score goes slowly up higher! And higher! And higher! Until–! Nothing.