You got your zombies, you got your vampires ... but werewolves are different. They are almost always depicted as victims of fate. They're infected and cannot control the changes that come over them. We fear them, but also pity them.

In the Canadian werewolf movie Ginger Snaps, it is through the character of 15-year-old Bridgette, played brilliantly by Emily Perkins, that we learn to fear and pity the fate of her older sister Ginger, played by Katherine Isabelle.

Ginger's been attacked in the woods and is gradually becoming a werewolf. She's getting patches of fur on unusual places, like her shoulder. She's growing a tail. She has cravings. At first her victims are the neighborhood dogs. But then....

Ginger formerly, like her sister, was a hair-hanging-in-her-face goth shlub with a suicide fixation. Now her usual pout has been replaced by a sinister grin. She's glamorous and sexy, much to the delight of a kind of Greek chorus of boys who stand on the sidelines of the movie and comment idiotically on passing events.

Ginger and Bridgette are more than just twisted sisters. They are soulmates who confide totally in each other. They are alienated teens living in a depressing Huckburg in the middle of nowhere and they comfort each other in their misery. Their parents are well-meaning, but clueless. There's a striking scene of the girls going through their morning routine, which includes Bridget strapping Ginger's tail to her thigh so it won't show.

Finally, the dialogue. It's all sideways, snarky, off-handed and obscene. Teens haven't riffed this cleverly in a movie since Heathers. And there's a hilarious scene of the sisters in the school nurse's office having the onset of menstruation explained to them with too-much-information cheeriness by by nurse. "Voluminous flow" is quite normal, she says helpfully.

Ginger Snaps almost flew under my radar. Don't let if fly under yours.