Remind me to keep my mouth shut the next time I say I should have been scarred. 2010's I Spit on Your Grave is a remake of a 1978 film of the same name. I was unimpressed by the original with its bland characters, lack of tension and surprisingly boring execution of a heinous serious of events. The rectifies these issues, but to the complete extreme.
The story is the same; a writer named Jennifer arrives in the deep country to write her first novel. Before she gets to her cabin, she interacts with some locals, a healthy mix of creepy, retarded and seemingly harmless. An embarrassing event occurs at the gas station which establishes part of a motive for some depraved acts. This combined with a retarded chap\'s misinterpretation of a kiss from Jennifer, quickly results in the go ahead for those acts. Jennifer is assaulted, mentally tortured, and ultimately raped repeatedly. Before the assailants can kill her, she jumps into the river and disappears. Her body is never recovered. About a month later she returns, to get her revenge.
There are some improvements from the original. There actually is a clearly established motive for these men to commit the acts that they do. In the original, they seemed to be a result of mostly them just being country psychos. Also, in the original, the men were lured in to the most ridiculous of traps and met there demise. The remake has them being ambushed for lack of a better term and dispatched in fairly quick and bizarre fashions. Having said those things, this version seemed more realistic.
However.
This film (I watched the unrated version) is quite vile. Needless to say, the crimes committed again Jennifer were most certainly uncomfortable and heinous. Not just the rape, but the mental abuse and games they play with her were just as evil. But, also the crimes committed against the men. Horrible, elaborate deaths. Disturbing at best.
This leads to the ultimate debate that should occur if both men and women view this at the same time. Were Jennifer's actions justified? It's clearly obvious her actions are revenge driven, but in case you may not pick up on that, she says the same things to each victim that were said to her during her ordeal. But does that make her right in her actions? If, not what would be fitting? Arrests and eventual death chamber? Same end result. Just not as inhumane. Possibly. I say that the debate "should" occur because it certainly will not. Everyone will be washing their brains in hot water in an effort to remove some of the images. The film seems more interested in shock value than healthy discussion. Not that all films should result in a healthy discussion, but man. You have quite a controversial subject to not want to spark one.
The film is better acted, directed and just plain is better than the original. But is it good? Unfortunately, no. It goes too far. Instead of say, the A Time to Kill approach about justifiable homicide, which mostly involves a deadly reaction to something and then a trial, this film just shows repeated horrible acts, which leaves you too jarred to even discuss the subject.
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