31 Days of Halloween: Second Chance Night: Ginger Snaps: A Tale of Teenage Transformation

Ginger Snaps - John Fawcett - 2000 

★★★-Day 12 of the Nightmare on Film Street  31 Days of Halloween Horror Challenge. Second chance night. Like it more than my first watch like 20 years ago. But I’m still not a huge fan. It's just fine.

Gist is two teenage sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, are obsessed with death and are kind of outcasts in their suburban high school. Ginger gets attacked by a werewolf and shit starts getting weird between them. You know, Ginger becomes more violent, both physically and behaviorally unrecognizable, and Brigitte searches for a way to reverse the werewoof curse. Clever title, ya dig? This all while navigating the dangers of adolescence, family dynamics, and such. Explores themes of puberty, identity, and the monstrous feminine, blending body horror with dark humor.

Emily Perkins as Brigitte and Katharine Isabelle as Ginger. Perkins I mostly think of as Bev Marsh from the 1990 It. Isabelle pops up here and there in mostly horror. She was the star in American Mary, played teen fodder in Freddy vs. Jason, and even appeared in a lesser Nolan film with Insomnia.
 
Others you may recognize include Kris Lemche as a drug dealing werewoof expert. He was in Final Destination 3, the one with the roller coaster, and shows up pretty frequently on the electric teevee machine. 
 
Mimi Rogers plays the mom. She famously introduced Tom Cruise, her husband from 1987 through 1990, to Scientology, which she left after the divorce. Looks like her and David Miscavige fucking hate each other and she’s on the Scientology naughty list, considered a “suppressive person.” Good for her. 

Jesse Moss plays a douche bro who gets turned. Was just writing the other day about Tucker & Dale vs Eviland saying haven’t seen him in anything else, though he plays a convincing prick. Of course, I randomly watch a movie with him in it the next day. 

Directed by one John Fawcett. He’s worked steadily since the early 1990s, directing mostly episodes of TV, most notably a huge chunk of Orphan Black. Film-wise, he’s mostly known for this flick.
 
Something funny is that the sisters are doing some art project where they stage suicides and photograph it. My theme for AP Art Studio this same time was suicide. Still have a few of those pieces from high school. One is a self-immolation. Another is the old death by hanging with a belt. I wasn’t a particularly dark kid but have always wanted that to be an option for people. 

Reminded me of sex ed from elementary school. How women have periods while dudes have nothing seemed infinitely unfair to me. “You mean women go through this traumatic experience every month for 30 to 40 years? Do men have anything like that. No. Crazy.”

Anywho, the flick wreaks of Canada. Canadian horror can be pretty fun. Pretty niche blend of psychological tension, atmospheric dread, and dark humor. There is the country's vast, often landscapes, lending itself to themes of isolation and identity. Emphasize slow-building tension, cerebral scares, social anxieties, fears of transformation/otherness. You get the idea. Usually can tell if a film is Canadian within a few minutes. There is an old joke, is this the United States 10 years ago, or Canada today?
 
Lot of dead dogs. Now I remember why I didn't like it as this is a great way to turn me off. Poor Baxter. Rest in peace, Norman. On the other hand, if you are going to keep a dog chained up, go fuck yourself. But, yeah, too much dead dog. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer is the worst movie of all time

Man, I Know What You Did Last Summer. Quick break from the Halloween movies. Shit ton more to go there, god help me. Breaking it up with IKWYDLS. Did not like. Did at one time. Chalking it up to not aging well as you definitely know you are watching a movie in the late 1990s. Twas the curse of Scream. Four out of five horror movies from IKWYDLS up until The Blair Witch Project (maybe even Saw) are the same. Up and coming 20 somethings playing high school/college archetypes that make regular snarky, self-referential statements that say "we're aware of that we are in a horror movie." See Disturbing Behavior, Final Destination, Halloween H20, Idle Hands, The Faculty, Urban Legend, so forth. All the same shit. This was the first of those (and one of the most poorly done) and is more or less a Scream clone without the satire. Worst movie of all time. Can't believe I used to like this shit.

Veronica Vaughn... So hot. Want to touch the heiney 

Pros: Solid 90s cast (though none of them are especially great at acting). Decent bit of nostalgia for me. Still remember seeing it in the theater and digging it. Pretty ladies though Jennifer Love Hewitt couldn't be wearing more clothes. Typical outfits include a long skirt/sweater or overalls with a long sleeve. Anne Heche and Veronica Vaughn are both looking fly though.

Cons: The first of about a million Scream rip offs. Soundtrack is insanely garbage. Take the worst song of all time from like 10 decent bands. It's a pretty meh story. No nudity. Kills are meh. Acting is surprisingly bad. As was the dialogue.

Gist of the flick...Four recent high school graduates--played by Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Helen), Ryan Phillippe (Barry), and Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray)--hit a pedestrian coming around a curve on an isolated backwoods road in a fishing town in New England.  Instead of going to the police, they decide to dump the body in the ocean, only it turns out he isn't dead so they attempt to straight up murder him by drowning. A year later, with everyone underachieving, they all start getting letters stating that "I know what you did last summer." Eventually the person writing the letters comes at them, knocking them off, along with a few other people, one at a time.

This guy

Written by screenwriter Kevin Williamson who did Scream, Scream II, Scream IV, and The Faculty. Dude was hot shit at the time and every horror movie that came out the four years or so after Scream were all the same, as I've notes several times. Out of the five movies of his I've watched recently, this one is definitely the worst. Directed by Jim Gillespie who hasn't really done anything except for this movie. In addition to the main four, the movie also features Johnny Galecki from The Big Bang Theory which I refuse to ever watch, Anne Heche who has more or less disappeared though she was always great in everything (she seems to have gotten a pretty bad deal for whatever reason), and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras who married Pete Sampras and played Veronica "So-Hot-Want-To-Touch-The-Heiney" Vaughn in Billy Madison.

Not a lot of kills in this movie but the best is definitely the first which is this Max kid who seems to have it pretty rough. He is boiling crab and shit at the fish market alone at night. Killer dude sort of comes up to him head on though this Max gentleman can't seem him very well because of all the steam. But he is trying though. Squinting and shit. When the hook comes in and gets him under the chin and he is dragged over the boiling pots and stabbed repeatedly and what have you. It looks pretty good and I thought the film had potential at that point. But, yeah, there are some pretty bad kills, too. Actually, all the rest of them are bad. Like with SMG who fought the dude off and pretty much got away home free only to look back when she is 10 feet from survival when she is murdered behind a bunch of trash (that should have been recycled).  

Best line of the movie comes from Julie after Barry says some dumb shit about how the letters they are getting that say "I know what you did last summer" likely aren't related to the guy they ran over and then tried to drown the year before. His character basically spends the whole movie being extremely disrespectful to everyone and generally just being a cock. Like when he is a dick to Galecki's character, Max, for no reason, I guess because he is nice to Julie and thus trying to date out of his social caste or something, basically shoving the guy's face and screaming "Shots! Get the fuck out of here!" He later assaults dude again when they think he is the one behind the notes and then tells the girls, who look like Gellar and Love Hewitt because they are those chicks, that they "look like shit" just to be a dick. This is all mighty aggressive behavior and dude is always wrong. Anyways, he says something like "You did a lot of things last summer." Julie replies "Yeah, well, only one murder comes to mind." Noice. Julie also develivers the worst line of the movie. A "what are you waiting for" scream to the killer who isn't around. Huffpost did an article on this movie back when where they explain that this was thought up by some kid who won a contest or something, got to be on set, and chose a moment where the actors had to do whatever he wanted (within reason, I assume) and this was it. JLH claims to remember it fondly, though it groan worthy these days, saying “People don’t know that that was just like some kid who loved horror movies... I’m glad I got to do that for him.” That is some pretty cool shit and I am a little bit jealous but it's still a dumb moment.

This brings me to a little shit with this flick... So the catalyst for this whole movie is hitting the dude and then attempting to murder him. Why not go to the police since the driver, Ray, was sober as a judge. It's because, according to Barry, no one would believe that he wasn't driving his car. "Nobody drives my car but me," he says at one point. I'm all about cops being full of shit and pinning shit on people and and what the fuck but this is dumb. Four doing alright white kids, at least half of them sober, hit a dude on a dead man's curve, telling the truth which isn't that bad. All this shit is grossly unnecessary. But overall, this post-hitting the guy and what have you, is probably the best scene in the flick. There we see solid inner workings of dumb, adolescent brains in crisis mode. They did some shit and they have to deal with it. Argue about how they should deal with. Do some more, much worse shit, and then have to psychically deal with it for the rest of their lives, which isn't long for exactly half of them. So yeah.

Party of one! IDK what that means

MVP has to be JLH. Before this movie, no idea who she is. Afterwards, she is one of the hottest chicks in Hollywood. She was in that show Party of Five but she was like third banana in that show. This really elevated her to leading (ish) lady status. Of the four kids, she is either first or second in overall performance (Phillippe is alright as well). People sort of realized that she was impossibly good-looking (she was more of a kid in PoF). It didn't hurt that this film really brought in the bucks, gaining $125 mill at the box office. She would parlay this role into the leads in films like Heartbreakers, Can't Hardly Wait (a great teen flick), the sequel to this flick I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and the show Ghost Whisperer. She really had a moment there and it was all thanks to this role, 100%.

Overall thoughts... Promising start but it drags on and ends with a lot of anti-climax. Gist of that is Julie thinks Ray, they are the last two standing, is the murderer and attacks him. She gets help from a fisherman who ends up being the real killer. They get it on--fighting way, not sexy way--and the killer gets his hand lopped off and flung into the ocean. Spoiler, dude ain't dead. The cops are all, "any idea why this guy is coming after all of yous." "Shit no, officer." And that is that except a little pointless maybe dream bit at the end that they ignore in the sequel which, hey hey, was way better than this POS mostly due to Jack Black and lot of unintentional hilarity. So look forward to that.

The Faculty is the greatest movie of all time

The Faculty. Most pro meth movie of all time. Saw it sophomore year of HS at the $1 theater (watched a shit ton of movies that year at that theater, remember it super fondly, RIP the $1 theater) and fucking loved it. At the time my favorite of the 700 high school movies from that year. I also got the soundtrack which was great. Had some Garbage, some Oasis, a Creed cover of "I'm Eighteen" which isn't terrible, and an awesome rendition of "Another Brick in the Wall" from one pop supergroup Class of 1999 featuring Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and Stephen Perkins and Martyn LeNoble of Jane's Addiction/Porno for Pyros. That supergroup covered three of my favorite five bands at the time. Anywho, what I remembered about the film itself was that John Stewart was in it and dies hilariously via a Bic through the eye, they bet hard on Usher being a breakout star, and the movie was insanely pro meth. All of these things are true and are what you should walk away with from said movie. So of course it's still dope but way doper than I expected. In fact, greatest movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Rip-off of other sci-fi thrillers. Ouch.

Pros: Great cast. Like amazingly so. Josh Hartnett is like the coolest. The plot was super fun albeit a total rip off of like 100 other science fiction flicks. Pretty good pacing. Wrapped up with a lot of personal nostalgia. Pretty ladies.

Cons: Basically Scream with aliens which was getting sort old by that point and is pretty dated as a movie from the late 1990s. Actually, looking at the credit list, wasn't shocked to see Kevin Williamson, who wrote most of the Scream franchise, wrote the screenplay for this as well.

Gist of it... A motley crew of high school student archetypes--the overachieving cheerleader (Jordana Brewster), the goth maybe lesbian (Clea DuVall), the new kid/southern belle (Laura Harris), the genius (Josh Hartnett), the miscast dumb jock (Shawn Hatosy), and the nerd (Elijah Wood)--must save the world from an alien invasion that for whatever reason has begun at their high school, first getting into their teachers' brains and taking control, then moving on to the town folk, student body, and their parents. Only not all of the archetypes are what they seem. Spoiler, some of them are also possessed by aliens. Movie was directed by one of the masters, Robert Rodrigues, who has done all kinds of dope ass shit (From Dusk Till Dawn, the Sin City movies, Planet Terror, El Mariachi, Machete, to name a fraction).

Got to give it up for the casting director in this flick. We get an insane 1990s ensemble, like if you were drafting 90s teens, most of these would be in your top ten, plus the faculty themselves are way more star studded than what I recalled. Some of the teachers and parents include an equally star studded bunch in Daniel von Bargen (Kruger in Seinfeld), hotty Famke Janssen who was Jean Grey in X-Men, super hotty Salma Hayek, Piper Laurie from Twin Peaks, Christopher McDonald (Shooter McGavin), Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from Cheers), Robert "T2" Patrick, and Jon Stewart. Usher Raymond is also in the movie. This is when they were really trying to make him a movie star. But dude can't act so he has maybe like five lines even though he was on the damn cover. Even get some recognizable extras. Like playing "Fuck Up #1"and "Fuck Up #2"--those their listed roles on IMDB--are Fuck Up #1 IRL Danny Masterson (famous for Hyde from That 70's Show and rape) and Wiley Wiggins whom you might recognize as the main freshman kid Mitch Kramer in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused which went instant classic, not sure what he's up to now but he doesn't appear to be raping people so I wish him the best.

Best line of the movie is "not the pole!" screamed by Elijah Wood when in his intro like six dudes pick him up, spread his legs, and repeatedly smash his genitals into a light pole. These guys are not chill. 

Favorite scene is easily the one where they recreate the old John Carpenter's The Thing blood test except instead of a hot copper wire they all do meth ("skat" that Hartnett's character makes in his basement) which turns out to be the aliens' weakness. So basically a slightly more exaggerated effect on the aliens than on humans. In it they each have to do a bump to prove that they aren't aliens. I couldn't imagine a worse way to get fucked up than doing meth with potential aliens that are trying to take over but maybe that's just me. It's also great that one of the hulks out when she takes it because she is indeed other worldly.

MVP is absolutely Josh Hartnett, awful hair and all. As The Ringer explains, Hartnett really had a moment and this was his greatest role in said moment. He plays a fifth-year senior who purposefully repeated the grade to sell drugs which is a good thing since it is mostly his ingenuity that stops the outbreak. How does this dude not win the movie is a better question. Some examples of his coolness. He's about to fuck his English teacher, played by Famke Janssen, before she gets turned into an alien. He gets her all... intrigued with his astute comments in class and then when she catch him selling meth out of the trunk of his car he offers her some then laxatives then condoms. She weakly tells him he is being rude. Then she is all over him as an alien and lays into him and talks hella shit to him in front of the whole school. But he acts all cool and signals to her to bring it on in this cool way. I get the feeling that alien actually just wants to fuck him. Her end is pretty great with Zeke crashing his hot ass muscle car into a bus. We get some crash and burn and decapitation. Movie wasn't nearly the greatest of all time without him. Good thing they did.

Prom Night is the greatest movie of all time

Prom Night. Canadian. Sweet. Lots of Jamie Lee Curtis high kicking. This and Halloween cemented JLC's status as a "Scream Queen". Lots of Leslie Nielson in a noncomedic though not entirely serious role. Lots of disco. Lots of stalking/death. Just like my junior and senior year proms. Shout out to Lindsay, my date to both of those dances. This movie combines Saturday Night Fever and The Town that Dread Sundown and sort of Carrie to form one hell of a strange flick. The movie has a sequel which I'll need to check out at some point called Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, which just sounds incredible, but the magic starts to happen around parts three and four, generally. Lucky for me there are Prom Night III: The Last Kiss from 1990 and Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil from 1992. These were what you would call sequels in name only and do not star JLC or the Naked Gun-man. If that isn't enough Prom Night for you, there was a loose remake that came out in 2008 with Idris Elba and Brittany Snow. Can totes see why they would want to remake Prom Night as it is the great movie of all time.

Pros: Canadian so over the top. Sweet disco dancing. Some decent suspense. Pretty ladies.

Cons: Was pretty confusing and slow at times. Pretty predictable.

Moms, fucking don't

Gist of Prom Night is that four little kids tool on a girl in an abandoned building to the point that she falls out of a window and dies. Yeesh. This is a sibling of JLC and her bro who are wearing the same outfit when they go out looking for the dead kid. Fast forward several years and a killer, possibly the escaped sex offender blamed for the crime, possibly Leslie Nielsen, or possibly JLC or her bro, starts picking off the kids that were there on the same day as their senior prom. In addition to JLC and Nielsen the movie features Antoinette Bower, Anne-Marie Martin, David Mucci who plays Lou and has the most ridiculous unibrow I've ever seen, Pita Oliver (a pretty lady), Mary Beth Rubens (another pretty lady), Casey Stevens, Michael Tough, and Jeff Wincott. I'm gonna assume that none of these names mean anything as I've never seen nor heard of any of them.

About the two people I recognize in this flick... I was super confused at the beginning of this flick when Nielsen showed up. Is this a comedy? Indeed it is not. Nonetheless, it is super weird seeing him play a straight-laced by the book cop. The other thing is that JLC was super pretty. I forgot what a beautiful young lady she was. Now it's all eating yogurt and staying regular. 

Some Luke and Leia action

Some weird shit that you should watch out for include the extreme sexual tension between JLC and her onscreen brother. They have a super sexually charged dance off in this extended disco prom dancing scene that is just out of control and goes on for like 10 minutes. What it reminded me of was when Ross and Monica dance their asses off in the Friends episode "The One With The Routine" in hopes of getting on the Dick Clark New Year's special. Just like that except without the irony. Lot of high kicking and grinding on each other. Fucking gross. 

More weird shit includes the whole scene revolving around the couple in the van. It is unclear if they had anything to do with the death at the beginning but they get got either way. This all starts post-coital, of course, where the guy and the gal (who is way out of this fat idiot's league) smoke a doob that they pull out of this book that has been hollowed out and filled with pre-rolled jays. There must be like 50 of them in there. So these two are high as balls when the killer pops in and totally kills their buzz, man, by all murdering the girl. Bummer. So the guy hops up front to try to drive way. What ensues is an insane driving and fighting scene where the dude is driving with the killer in the van like he is going to get away from him or something. But by some miracle the fatty beats off the killer, not in the hand job way, you sick fuck, and is home free. Instead of driving like a normal person though he drives right off a cliff like a dumb fuck and the second it goes airborne explodes. I'm no physicist but usually vans have to crash before there is burn. That is why they call it crash and burn, I'm guessing. Just part of the charm in this one. Defying the laws physics. 

Unibrow still intact thought his head is indeed severed

Another thing, there are some real charmers in this movie. First there is Lou, the unibrow guy. You have to watch this shit to appreciate how fucking awful this dude is. He goes to pick up his date for prom, the girl played by actress Anne-Marie Martin who is way the fuck out of his league, and just honks the horn repeatedly. When she goes out to the car, irritated, he and a buddy are getting wasted. He is not dressed up, wearing jeans and a cutoff (we later see this same ensemble with a tux coat thrown over it), and just acts like an asshole and runs over the chick's parent's garbage cans as he peels out. It's nice when he finally gets his head chopped off and kicked. Then there is the guy dating Kelly, the Mary Beth Ruebens character. The scene where she gets it is preceded by a heavy petting sess between the two. This in the girl's (I think) locker room. He lets her know that he is DTF but she, you know, doesn't want to lose her virginity in a public bathroom. He pressures her some more but she ain't ready. "If you won't do it, there are plenty of other girls who will," he says. And then he leaves, immediately talks some shit, and then starts making out with some other random chick who was digging his shit talking, rapist vibe. Meanwhile, that chick in the locker room is like, "I guess we broke up?" before getting dead.

He even dances like an asshole

If you aren't into the ridiculous stuff I just went into and are more of the horror movie purest, fear not, the ending of this flick totally redeems this movie. With one mean girl left at prom, the killer stalks her throughout the entire fucking high school. Suspense really builds as she keeps almost getting caught before just getting away. It builds and builds until she gets to the end of building with all the doors chained shut. This goes on for a long ass time and is fucking brutal. See? Something for everyone. Pretty ladies, gore, creative killing, suspense. Everything. Greatest movie of all time.

Detention is the greatest movie of all time

I looooooved this fucking movie. Totally one of those kitchen sink type movies, there is a lot going on. The film has lots of meta, self-referential humor,
features a slasher based on a Saw esque movie within the movie called
Cinderhella, time travel, prom, Freaky Friday body swapping that makes the old noodle hurt to think about, a vegan protagonist, a guy with fly DNA, Canadians, and even aliens. It is fucking awesome.

The basic gist of the movie is a killer obsessed with the fictitious horror franchise Cinderhella dons the costume and kills a bunch of Grizzly Lake High School students. The group of suspects/potential victims include protagonist Riley Jones (Shanley Caswell, a pretty young lady who was in The Conjuring but not much else I've seen) who is sort of a suicidal outcast with a broken leg, her love interest/buddy from childhood Clapton Davis (Josh Hutcherson who was Peeta in the Hunger Games), his love interest and her one-time homey (whose mother has inhabited her body, sending her mind back to 1991--it's best not to think to hard about this) the cheerleader Ione, the "nerd" that's obsessed with Riley, Sander Sanderson (A.D. Johnson), and the jock with fly DNA that is obsessed with Ione, Billy Nolan (Parker Bagley), and numerous others including a Canadian. The principal, Dane Cook, gives all the usuals all-day detention in an effort to keep Cinderhella from murdering anyone at prom. 

Pros: Pacing. Pretty ladies. Meta as fuck. The survivor girl is a vegetarian. Casting. Soundtrack. This movie rocked.

Cons: Sometimes it is tell what the hell is happening. There may be too much going on here (at times).

The pacing of this movie is fucking insane. It's a movie for people with no attention span and it really jumps all over the place. It's like being on Adderall. We start out with a killing, segue to Mean Girls, get some more killing, suddenly get a dude with fly DNA, more killing, get the ludicrous solution to the killings (put them all in detention) when they start watching the Cinderhella movie where they see the movie is about a bunch of kids in detention are watching a lower budget movie of about a bunch of kids in detention watching a very
low budget movie of about a bunch of kids in detention watching a possible porn movie of about a bunch of kids in detention. 

It is here when we get my favorite line in the movie which sort of requires a bit of backstory. For a long time my female companion and I would seek out ridiculous Canadian horror. It is a sub-genre I encourage everyone to explore. Some of these movies are genuinely good movies with lower costs to make like Ginger Snaps, Ponypool, Trick 'r Treat, or The Witch (2015). Others decide to mix in elements of comedy, these being along the likes of Horns, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, and Wolfcop. And then there are the ones that are just a train wreck that ends up sort of working, Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare both  come to mind here. Zombie Nightmare even had a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode devoted to it where they address this sub-genre at one point saying that the movie had "Canada's stink all over it," which is something we often say and both said while watching this movie. So it really tickled us when one of the kids in detention, watching one of these low budget slasher flicks inside of flasher flick, and so on, asks, "what is this, Canadian?" It was the first time we had ever heard this addressed and could not stop laughing. 

Another hilarious moment and reference to Canada comes near the beginning of the movie from Gord, the Canadian, is easily my favorite character (but they are all pretty amazing). He is facing off again the main girl in debate class on vegetarianism. This fucking rant he goes on is fucking golden and complete nonsense and it comes at you in that style of debate where information is just thrown at you at insane, breakneck speed with "facts" that have no basis in reality. I don't usually include fucking dialogue (or monologue or whatever) in these things but this is fucking out there. It goes thus: "Yes, I'd like to start off by saying that this girl's argument is ridiculous! Vegetarians who eat fish are hypocrites! She thinks because fish may feel no pain they don't value their lives. Absurd! And notice how she expresses almost no sympathy for chickens. That's because Americans hate chickens. For example, KFC serves popcorn chicken to assure the customers that the chicken was blown to bits, yet the meatball sub at Subway isn't called 'popcorn cow.' Americans want chickens to die! Lame! Personally, I do feel sympathy for animals, which is why I choose to only eat baby animals. They have not lived as long, and they are not leaving as much behind. Baby clams, chicken wings, baby seals - no... big... loss! If we don't eat meat, we lose out place in the food chain. Eating animals gives us confidence as humans. Vegetarians like this girl, who is only wearing one shoe, have less confidence than everybody else."

More comedy than horror, we are treated to a mullet beats ponytail battle where two dudes fight in the style of Swayze and Seagal, time traveling and freaky Fridaying (for no reason), a dude with fly DNA (again, for no reason other than referencing another horror movie), the best possible answer to "do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?" ("the easy way"), and an out there ending involving aliens and Canadians.  We get lots of meta-references like talking about how the murders at the beginning are like Scream, a cop says the goings on in the school really "nuked the fridge," and so forth. And when the vegetarian decides to eat meat again we get a dude that comes down in pieces on the grill, making the burger falls out of her mouth in disgust (noice). Movie is sweet and definitely worth your time. 

Update: My Dr. Carver Auteur Autopsy review...