TEENAGE FURY

Brigette

Ginger Snaps (2000)
Director: John Fawcett
Writers: Karen Walton (written by and story), John Fawcett (story)
Stars: Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle, Kris Lemche

Hard Candy (2005)
Director: David Slade
Writer: Brian Nelson
Stars: Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page, Sandra Oh

Jennifer's Body (2009)
Director: Karyn Kusama
Writer: Diablo Cody
Stars: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody

Many modern, female-centered, coming-of-age horror movies share common roots with ancient Grecian dramas wherein individuals act as stand-ins for greater societal concepts. Coming-of-age stories feature an essential turning point that allows the protagonist to display their progress towards maturity. Needy, Haley, and Brigette, the protagonists of Jennifer’s Body, Hard Candy and Ginger Snaps, reach that point and beyond as they display characteristics similar to the stages of development the ancient Greeks went through on their evolution toward a legal system that was fair to all, as fifth century BC playwright Aeschylus illustrated in his play cycle The Oresteia. The three plays, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, symbolically tell the tale of Ancient Greece's coming-of-age via the conversion from lawlessness and vigilantism to a legal code that applied to all and was enforced by the government, not individuals. This progression is mirrored by the adolescent girls' transition from the chaotic powerlessness of childhood to the responsibility that comes with the agency of adulthood.

Aeschylus

The belief that guilt was an inheritable trait and children could be held responsible for the actions of their parents was embraced by the ancient Greeks in their mythology. A prevalent example is the curse on the House of Atreus which appears in many of mythology’s best known stories, The Oresteia being one. Although its origins are not clear, many sources attribute the beginning of the curse as King Tantalus’ punishment by the gods for blasphemy. They cursed his bloodline, guaranteeing his descendants would suffer for his crimes. The Oresteia uses the final generations afflicted by the curse to illustrate Greece’s transition towards a just rule of law.

Needy

Powerful females prevalence in horror run the gamut from supremely evil characters such as The Brood’s Nola to children fighting evil monsters like Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street. In Aeschylus’ allegorical plays, the agents of divine justice are cast as females: Athena, the Goddess of War and Wisdom, and the Erinyes, also known as The Furies, frightful daughters of Uranus, whose purpose was to torment the worst offenders. In the contemporary, coming-of-age horror films mentioned earlier, the focus is on the young females’ transfiguration to powerful, independent beings. They began by manifesting weakness and being dependent on more forceful characters before gaining strength and independence to successfully free themselves and fight evil.

The Oresteia begins at a time when there was no legal code or authority. Justice was up to the individual’s discretion and enforced by acts of vigilantism. In Agamemnon, the first play of the trilogy, King Agamemnon, a descendant of Tantalus and affected by the curse, is assassinated by his wife for sacrificing their daughter to Diana on his way to The Trojan War. Though she had no sanctioned authority to act, neither is there any authority to hold Agamemnon accountable. Ironically, the same lack of an authoritative legal code that allowed her husband to go unpunished also protected her.

Low Shoulder  is willing to sacrifice
 anything or anyone for success.

A hallmark of the coming-of-age genre is a character’s development of agency, the ability to do things independently. In Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody’s Jennifer's Body (2009), high school student Needy (Amanda Seyfried) commits an act of vigilantism similar to Clytemnestra’s when she slaughters rock band Low Shoulder in retaliation for killing her friend and unleashing a demon in her hometown. She begins the movie insecure and unsure of herself, content to follow the lead of pretty and popular Jennifer (Megan Fox). However, she breaks from Jennifer’s influence when she discovers her friend has become a monster. Jennifer’s transformation is the result of the band’s bungled attempt at a Satanic sacrifice where Jennifer was mistakenly killed. After Needy kills the demon in Jennifer’s body, she discovers that surviving the battle has empowered her and she goes after the band to make them pay for their crimes.

Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe Bouguereau_(1862)

The Goddess Athena’s decision to use a trial by jury in The Oresteia’s second play, The Libation Bearers, to decide the fate of an accused criminal became the foundation of the legal code that the ancient Greeks adapted. Matricide was considered one of the most egregious crimes in Ancient Greece. When Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, killed his mother to avenge his father, The Furies (Erinyes) awoke to torment him. They pursued him to Athens where he fled to appeal to Athena for relief. Wishing to avoid discord among the divinities, she chose to let a jury of citizens decide Orestes’ fate, only casting her vote if there was a tie. She was so pleased by the outcome, she declared that all legal disputes would be settled this way.

Haley (Ellen Page), the young teenage girl from David Slade and Brian Nelson’s Hard Candy (2005), follows the paths of The Furies and Athena as she both torments and tries Jeff (Patric Wilson), a man she accuses of being a child pornographer, pedophile and murderer. Hard Candy inverts the tale of Little Red Riding Hood by making the weaker appearing Haley stronger than the wolf. Her immaturity and gullibility is a ruse to gain access to Jeff’s home to gather evidence of his guilt. Confronted by her findings and revealing his brutal nature after Haley performs a pseudo-castration, Jeff confesses and is sentenced to death. Unlike Needy, who delivers her vigilante justice to Low Shoulder without comment, Haley declares she is acting as the proxy of every girl he has hurt, legitimizing her righteous retribution.

Haley

One of the highest purposes of a fair legal code is protecting the innocent. Athena’s choice to end the curse and to stop holding children accountable for their descendants’s crimes, in The Eumenides, the final play of The Oresteia, extends the responsibilities of law to that purpose. After acquitting Orestes with her tie-breaking vote, she makes two important declarations: The Erinyes are now repurposed as protectors of justice and are renamed The Eumenides. She also puts an end to inherited guilt by ending the curse on the descendants of Tantalus. Orestes and his surviving sister, Electra, are freed from the sins of the past. From now on, everyone is born innocent and under protection of the law.

Like Hard Candy used the figure of the Big Bad Wolf as the antagonist, John Fawcett and Karen Walton’s Ginger Snaps (2000) uses wolves as lycanthropes to be the perpetrators of the evil that ensnares and exploits the innocent. Lycanthropy moves from one “generation” to the next via bite just as inherited guilt transfers from parents to their children. High school student Brigette (Emily Perkins) becomes alarmed when her older sister, Ginger (Katherine Isabelle), is attacked by a werewolf. As the next full moon draws near, Ginger’s appearance and behavior begins to change as the violent nature of the werewolf begins to assert itself. When Ginger fully transforms, she traps Brigette and attempts to infect her. Brigette realizes it is up to her to kill Ginger and end the curse, lest she become a werewolf too and join in the slaughter.

Ginger's coming-of-age story veers into the abject

According to Aeschylus, the gods themselves set the example of how humans can free themselves from relentless cycles of bloody retribution like the one that beset the House of Atreus. The Atreidi paid the price for their ancestors' blasphemous behavior until freed by Athena’s judgement in the trial of Orestes. In doing so, she showed humanity a path to a higher form of justice that applied to all and protected all. Needy, Haley and Brigitte sought to balance the scales of justice and in doing so were recast from their adolescent selves into powerful creatures who acted with the authority of the gods to slay evil doers. Their coming of age stories staunch the flow of blood started by evil men and monsters to make the world safer for all.