I Spit On Your Grave
Sisters are doing it for
themselves…
Apparently there are no new
ideas in Hollywood. The last few years have seen a rash of ‘70s horror movie
remakes hit our screens with the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and zombie classic Dawn of the Dead being retooled for a younger, more savvy,
generation. Most have been pretty superfluous (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, The Amityville Horror);
soulless, by-the-numbers retreads, machine-engineered to cash-in on the
goodwill engendered by the originals.
Some (A Nightmare on Elm
Street, Friday the 13th, Hallowe’en) have been, frankly, terrible. Why would anyone want
to remake Hallowe’en? Why would
you remake it unless you can bring something new to it? Why would you let Rob
Zombie direct it? And why would you humanise Michael Myers, its inhuman,
indestructible killing machine (a character referred to in the original
shooting script merely as “the Shape”)? Michael’s a faceless, unstoppable
killing machine, devoid of thought, emotion or motive. That’s why he was scary! Making him just another freaky
outsider with issues kinda misses the point. The original movie was a sleek,
near-perfect engine of sustained terror and suspense. Why would you screw with
that? But most bafflingly, why would you let Rob Zombie direct it? Rob Zombie couldn’t direct traffic.
Some remakes however have
actually been pretty good. I don’t care what anyone says, Zack Snyder’s Dawn
of the Dead was both bleaker and a
lot more fun than Romero’s original and the recent remake of The Last House
on the Left (itself a reimaging of
Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring)
was a vast improvement over the original and its salacious misogyny.
Thankfully, Stephen R. Monroe’s updating of Meir Zarchi’s classic exploitation
sleazefest I Spit On Your Grave
(also known as Day of the Woman)
falls in this camp.
The plot is as simple and
basic as the original: Jennifer (Sarah Butler), a young writer from the city,
rents an isolated cabin deep in the heart of redneck country to write her latest
novel. She stops for gas, instantly attracts the attentions of the local good
ol’ boys and proves strangely immune to their rustic charms. The boys decide
(after a couple of beers) that what this hoity toity city gal really needs
is a good seeing to from a bunch of real men. So they break into her house. They terrorise her. They brutalise her. They gang-rape and sodomise her, leaving her for dead in the woods. Then they cover their tracks,
destroying the evidence of their crime, erasing any signs of her existence,
tying up any loose ends, before settling back into their lives of humdrum rural
tedium; pumping gas, hunting quail and eating potato chips. Jennifer survives
however, despite their best efforts, and begins her own campaign of terror,
stalking them one by one, driving
wedges between the members of the group, before exacting a Biblical
vengeance; trapping and killing each
of them in suitably fiendish, crowd-pleasing ways.
And, that’s about it. So
far, so run-of-the-mill. Where I Spit On Your Grave differs from your average revenge flick however is
in the build-up to and immediate aftermath of the film’s crucial central rape scenes. While the
scenes where Jennifer is attacked are horrific, the slow-burn build to the rape
brings home the true nature of the crime. Jennifer’s rapists aren’t the cartoon lunkheads of the original film; they’re convincingly rounded, if thoroughly unpleasant, individuals. These men aren’t just psychotic
hillbillies living in the woods. These men are believable members of a
community with lives, loved ones and responsibilities. One even steps away
mid gang-rape to take a phone call from his young daughter. They’re not monsters. They’re ordinary men whom fate
has allowed to give in to their baser instincts. The film makes it explicit
that their actions have little to do with sex and everything to do with
power.
Trapped for the most part in dead-end jobs in the back of beyond, these men are essentially impotent, frustrated failures, their glory days long over, a life of minimum wage and
middle-age spread stretching before them, every day exactly the same as the one
before. It’s almost inevitable that
their rage, frustration and simmering resentment will eventually boil over into an act of shocking
violence. The rape itself is a gruelling, bruising experience but it’s the scenes that precede it that are truly uncomfortable
and almost too difficult to watch. Invading her home, the gang exert their power by subjecting Jennifer to a series
of increasingly threatening and
more violent humiliations. They rifle
through her underwear drawer. Force her to drink with them. Ridicule her writing. Flick lit matches at her. Threaten violence. Demean her by
making her show her teeth like a show pony. Force her to fellate a pistol
barrel.
Beautiful, talented and
urbane, Jennifer isn’t just a target of opportunity; she’s emblematic of their shortcomings as men. It’s only by
terrorising her that they’re able to violently assert their lost masculinity, videoing her ordeal and their dominance for their
own amusement. After the clammy intensity and escalating dread of
these scenes it’s almost a relief when they finally attack her. Almost.
The prolonged assault on
Jennifer is horrible, an ordeal
not just for the character but, subjectively, for the audience. By the end of it Jennifer is shattered,
numb, broken, Sarah Butler’s naked vulnerability eloquently bringing home not
just the physical cost of rape but the mental and emotional desolation. Butler, in her first major role, is fantastic, delivering
a raw, intense, committed
performance, part wounded-Bambi, part avenging angel. She’s ably supported by a
cast featuring some of the best creepy character actors working in Hollywood
today with former soap hunk Jeff Branson particularly good as the silky lead
rapist.
Having cheated death,
Jennifer’s vengeance is Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye (quite literally in one
case) stuff; each indignity visited upon her repaid tenfold. So the rapist with
a tooth fetish finds himself on the receiving end of Jennifer’s amateur
dentistry. The voyeuristic slob who stalks her, videoing her ordeal, is treated to
an eye-opening experience involving some fishhooks and a flock of crows. And as for the rapist who declares he’s an ass-man
before brutally sodomising her…
While the scenes where
Jennifer hunts and kills each of her rapists flirt with torture porn, I Spit
On Your Grave lacks the amorality
and nihilism of the Saw or Hostel movies or their
lush, glossy look. Grainy and
washed out-looking, I Spit On Your Grave eschews the aesthetics of
torture porn in favour of a harsher, voyeuristic, cinema verite-style which sucks the audience in, implicating them in the unfolding horror. Sure, Jennifer may
look like she’s enjoying herself as she crushes limbs or snips
off a rapist’s penis before shoving his mutilated member down his throat but her victims deserve it. These aren’t the poor, paper-thin dumb schmucks
unlucky enough to cross Jigsaw’s path or the horny, teenage, walking chalk
outlines backpacking across Europe/Central America/China (delete as applicable)
who fall foul of white slavers/rich sadists/snuff movie directors/organ
farmers/cannibals (delete as applicable) and are lovingly tortured, mutilated
and murdered in glorious technicolour, indulging the audience’s secret
desire to see beautiful people die horrible, lingering deaths. Jennifer’s victims deserve what’s coming to them.
It’s ok to vicariously enjoy seeing them suffer. And if at times the elaborate
lengths to which Jennifer goes to arrange interesting deaths for her attackers
beggars belief, then so what? It’s only a movie.
A huge improvement on its
sleazy predecessor, I Spit On Your Grave is probably the least misogynistic,
most pro-feminist exploitation movie you’ll ever see about gang rape. It’s
certainly less misogynistic than Sex and the City 2. Where, admittedly, the only rape committed was upon
the suffering audience.
David Watson
Director
Stephen R. Monroe
Cast
Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Daniel Franzese, Rodney
Eastman, Chad Lindberg, Tracey Walter, Andrew Howard
Country
USA
Screenplay
Stuart Morse based on Meir Zarchi’s Day of the
Woman
Running time
106min
Year
2010 (UK release date 21/01/2011)
Certificate
18
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