Sisters Ginger and Brigitte are two girls different from the others. They have no relationships with anyone outside of themselves and spend their time pretending to commit suicide and immortalizing it all with photographs. While in the neighborhood where they live someone is massacring all the dogs, Ginger lives through the obligatory transition from teenager to adult. The night she receives her first menstruation, she is attacked by a creature very similar to a wolf. From that moment on, Ginger's life will never be the same. Her body slowly begins to transform and undergo behavioral changes, and only Brigitte is aware of the true nature of those alterations. Before the situation deteriorates and Ginger completely loses control, Brigitte will have to find a solution to stop the infection afflicting her sister.
The figure of the werewolf has always been in the collective imagination of horror cinema as the monster par excellence, from the years when Lon Chaney Jr. was bitten by a wolf to save a girl to the still today acclaimed moonlit transformation of John Landis and his star-spangled wolf on a London trip. After dozens of films on the subject, in 2000, "Ginger Snaps" a werewolf trilogy made in Canada that enjoys considerable success at home and tells the story of the Fitzgeralds, two problematic sisters dealing with a werewolf attracted to their innocent blood.
The first chapter of the series, released in Italy only in the late-night television and home video circuit under the title "Licantropia Evolution - Return to the Present" is the typical werewolf film in which the infamous monster arrives, bites someone, and this person in turn transforms into a werewolf, and so on. Therefore, nothing new except that this time the monster's victim is a girl, Ginger, a difficult teenager with suicidal tendencies and dark thoughts, near her first menstruation.
The metaphor of lycanthropy used to describe adolescent problems is well studied, in fact, the people around Ginger (with the exception of the sister who witnessed the wolf attack) believe that she is undergoing a change due to finally sexual maturity. The new physical features, the attitude changing from an awkward girl to a sensual temptress, mood swings, and hair growth on the body are some of the typical changes of an adolescent's transition into adulthood, here presented as effects of a werewolf bite.
Perhaps some viewers will find the comparison inappropriate, but overall it works, as it makes the protagonist's abnormal behavior credible.
But it's not about banal stereotypes related to adolescence, on the contrary, the first part is very well cared for and goes beyond the classic teen-horror where the young are pure butchery for a hungry beast. We are shown, albeit in small doses (it is after all a horror), the discomfort of two young girls dealing with integration among classmates, bullying towards the "losers", depression, and difficult family relationships. All very delicate topics addressed discreetly without exceeding gratuitous pathos. Also noteworthy are the beautiful opening credits in which Ginger and Brigitte's suicidal intentions take shape in a series of gruesome and fantastic photos representing their death.
Then in the second part the film changes tone and shifts into a real horror, with all the typical naivety of the genre, and it is here that there is a drop in style and tension. It seems almost that, once the good initial ideas were exhausted, the screenwriters had slapped on the first horror ending that came to mind, ruining the dark and pessimistic atmosphere of the beginning.
Another not negligible flaw is certainly the makeup. If Ginger's first changes were well cared for, everything fades when the real transformation begins, fake and limited in movement, destroying all the sensuality she had acquired frame by frame.
Overall, "Licantropia Evolution" remains a good film for all enthusiasts, and if viewers watch it aware of the fact that it will not end up in the top list of the best werewolf films, they can easily get passionate and remember it with pleasure.
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