Halloween reboot #4 I Spit on Your Grave

Well hundreds of years ago I saw this film in what was known as a video store. There it was always tagged with a “Must be 18” tag to rent it. That always intrigued me as what could be so horrible in this film that only viewers the age of 18+ could witness. Since It was rated R, like the majority of horror, why was this movie different.

VS.

I get why this was controversial back in the day and why it was banned in various countries and deemed terrible by the film critic industry. These were factors that drove me to view it.

I Spit on Your Grave (1980) is about a female author name Jennifer who decides to rent a cabin in the country. There she plans on working on a new book. Along the way she attracts the attention of three local hooligans and their dim witted sidekick. They decide it would be a good idea to give Jennifer a good raping. After a series of vicious sexual assaults Jennifer decides to take revenge on these four goons.


I Spit on Your Grave 2010

Not the girl from Twilight, but kind of looks like her from time to time.
Plus she is a better actress, but that isn't saying much.

The reboot follows the same plot. Jennifer returns to write a book, but this time it is a more backwoods area and not somewhere like up state East coast. Here she runs into a group of four hooligans and their dim witted buddy. This of course leads to a series of sexual assaults and Jennifer is left for dead. She then exacts revenge on these fellas, but this time in much more intricate fashion.

The fellas planning their next "date night."

Well, I will first establish that we all know rape and murder are wrong. Nobody should enjoy both. There.

Now these films are nothing but rape and then murder so there.

I have to saw that neither of these films are good. They are both pretty terrible on various levels.

The original version had a gritty and awful realism to it. It made it really creepy as one can imagine that this could happen. The remake, seems a bit more silly in that regard.






The original character of Jennifer gets assaulted. She then decides to get revenge on these fellas and does it in a way that is “believable.” She returns to seduce the guys that raped her. She plays a  sort of “Hey I like it rough!” card to get their attention. Then she dispatches them with sharp instruments and a hanging. 

The new version of Jennifer survives and gets her revenge by creating ideas that were tossed away from the Saw franchise. Somehow she devises elaborate deaths (some are even ironic to boot) for her group of assailants. It is pretty damn absurd and takes the film from rape/revenge to rape/torture porn.

He likes to watch so he gets to have his eyes plucked out. Ironic huh?

Speaking of the assailants real quick, they are terrible in both films. However, the remake makes them even more inhuman, evil and one dimensional. They even add in a corrupt and rapey town sheriff for some reason too. The sheriff makes the group of immoral goons worse. It is hard to believe a group of guys like this exists. Then you add an anal raping lawman to the mix too and it reaches an even higher level of absurdity.

Meet the local lawman, Sheriff "Bad Touch."

Seriously? We need a corrupt and rape fueled small town sheriff? What was the point? A horrible plot point is what the point was. They tried for some character development by giving this guy a wife and kid. You don’t like him already. Why bother with a tacked on family to make him seem even worse. Why not have him run over small cute animals on the way back to his family after raping a girl. Just a terrible and unnecessary character a film damn near full of them.

Speaking of absurd did I mention this girl has a cabin in the woods and next to it is a smaller abandoned cabin. This smaller cabin full of foreshadowing. When she visits it early in the film we are treated to shots of all manner of implements and tools for possible torture/revenge. This was just so heavy-handed. She might as well have just said out loud that this would make a great revenge murder location.

The demise of the rapey quartet in the original was all done simply. Jennifer seduces a few guys and then dispatches them. If there was any elaborate death it was using  boat motor on a guy trying to get into said boat. That was the only elaborate death in the original. However, the use of sex to lure these guys in was believable. Especially since we fellas are all dumb and will always go after some ladies even if it means our demise.

New Jennifer uses a cartoon cliché of knocking the bad guys over the head to capture them. Then after the passage of time, she drags them to the abandoned shack to exact her torturous revenge. It is beyond dumb that this even happens. Especially since she devises over the top torture/death sequences: suspended drowning in lye, eyes pecked out by crows, shotgun colonostomy etc. This was a more ridiculous concept than guys returning to sex-up a lady they previously raped…to get more sex.

I’m so done with this. There is more that could be covered, but there is no point. I Spit on Your Grave was a bad exploration rape/revenge story that had pinch of gritty realism to it. The reboot is a less engaging (yeah if that is even possible) and just bad torture porn/revenge story.

Where the original was taboo for viewing and lead people to see it due that fact; the reboot is just a better produced, acted but overall worse story.

By the gods! Stay away from both of these movies. I wish I had. 

Next I’m going back to look at an inevitable ruining of another favorite film of mine, The Hitcher.