Tuesday, September 21, 2010

I Spit On Your Grave 2010 Remake



I Spit On Your Grave – Remake

Finally I get to talk about a remake that doesn’t suck!  I am so excited about this movie.

The plot is the same as the original.  A writer, Jennifer Hills, goes into the woods to write a novel.  Along the way she haphazardly meets her assailants and is later cornered and gang raped by them.  She then seeks a bloody and justifiable revenge on each of them.

The original is based on a true story, in case you don’t know.  The director, Meir Zarchi, his children and a family friend came upon a naked and battered woman, clinging to life in a bush.  She’d been brutally raped and beaten.  Zarchi rushed her to the police station where the police proceeded to interrogate her instead of calling an ambulance.  He explains in excruciating detail how they kept asking her to spell her name through a broken jaw, and insisted she answered questions before they would help.  Disgusted and frustrated he made Day of the Woman (later re-titled I Spit On Your Grave) as a way of helping her regain the agency she lost that day.  

I felt that the remake kept that story in mind, and that’s really all I could have asked for.  This version might be more suitable for your everyday audience because it has MUCH less focus on the rape (which is still blaringly detailed, mind you, but not as much as in the original) and much more focus on the revenge.  I would say the original is half rape and half revenge, whereas this movie is 40% - 60% or so.  

One of the scenes that bothers audiences the most from the original is the fact that you see Jennifer Hills sprawled out on top of her phone.  This is infuriating to people.  Why isn’t she calling for help!?  Zarchi explains in the DVD commentary that he purposefully kept the phone in shots to reinforce that she had no legal recourse.  However, the audience isn’t made aware of this, and it plays out like a continuity error.  The remake settles this by having Jennifer drop her cell phone in the toilet.  But I’ll get to that more, later.
I also have to say that having a sheriff involved in the rape (no, that’s not a spoiler) reinforces her lack of legal recourse.  Much appreciated, having prior knowledge to the true side of this story.

In the beginning scene where Jennifer is pumping gas, her total is $19.78.  Clever clever, Steven Monroe.

I was not immediately sold on the character of Jennifer Hills.  Viewing the original, I neither liked nor disliked her.  In this remake I fiercely disliked her in the beginning.  She was constantly in skimpy clothing.  She knocked into things and broke things (like her cell phone), and I thought they were making her too much the damsel in distress.  Then she kisses her would-be assailant and it was almost too much for me.  I couldn’t understand – was Monroe trying to portray her as asking for it?  That just wouldn’t do.  That was going to insult every woman on the planet, rape victim or not.  And although I grew to like her…or at least tolerate her…I’m still not convinced they weren’t implying she deserved it on some level.

It was much more exaggerated than in the original.  The group of men in the original never saw her in her underwear.  They wanted to rape her because they saw her in a bikini and because she was a “big city whore.”  They touted that “all women want it.”  While the same goes for the remake, it can’t be overlooked that they get much more of Jennifer Hills, which only serves to discredit her in some way.  Not only that, but one of the men – Johnny Miller – tries to flirt with her in the beginning, and frankly she’s a little bit of a bitch in return.  She obviously gets off on embarrassing him.  Standing alone this is insignificant, if not inconsequential.  But in comparison to the original, where she’s much more innocent, I have to wonder what the point they’re trying to make is exactly.

The rape scenes are greatly reduced.  In the original, you watch as each of the men takes their turn on her, whereas in the remake she loses consciousness.  Honestly it’s no great loss.  I thought it would be, but they did a fantastic job invoking the same reactions with what they did show.  And the revenge scenes were amazing!  The audience felt revitalized; we cheered together, we gasped and cringed together, and sometimes we even laughed together.  The special effects could have been better, but I takes what I can gets.

It even captured the moment at the end when you realize the absurd futility in what Jennifer Hills has just done.  It didn’t change anything, but goddamn, don’t you feel a little better?

I know this movie is only being released to one theater in my area – Deer Valley AMC, which is more than an hour away.  I can only imagine how many screens it will play.  I doubt it will make much of a dent in the box office.  If you have the chance though, and you’ve wanted to see the original but you’re afraid you won’t be able to handle it, this one is a great bet.   

Great gore with a minty fresh taste.
 
7.5/10

8 comments:

  1. I liked it too. This one would have better reception if Starz gave it a bigger release. Will I see you tomorrow for Buried??
    ABB

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  2. I'm curious as to how this version will be received in Chicago, and the UK. And what Roger Ebert thinks. HA. Isn't it odd that the man who wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls got so angry about Day of the Woman?

    And you bet I'll be there! Probably not as early this time though.

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  3. You have convinced me with this review to man up and watch the remake, I was always too scared to of the original, I know, hard to believe right! I prefer revenge films anyway, so I will definitely try and hunt this down when it crosses the pond to the UK.
    On a side note, have you ever seen a Japanese film called Freezer? I really enjoyed that, it has a similar premise and she takes revenge, as she had no legal standing because of the culture she lived in and the shame it would bring if she had reported it, I think you would enjoy it

    @StarsMum

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  4. Great!! You get really random comments here. Are you keeping the blog format?
    ABB

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  5. @StarsMum
    No, I've never heard of that one. I'll have to check it out!

    @ABB
    That's why I had to moderate comments. I can't have people's petty bullshit coming here since this is technically my work blog. We'll have to discuss it when I see you. So if you ever comment, make sure not to mention my real name or the paper or anything like that.

    Once I switch this over to the website (once my logo comes in and I work the html a little) it'll require accounts. Kind of like ICSYB.

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  6. I hope this is playing somewhere in Portland. The original is first in my Netflix queue along with a couple other horror movies that I will review, mostly just for you. :)

    Thanks for all the reviews you do. Without them I likely wouldn't be watching any horror films whatsoever. Which is sad, but so many are crap that I can't bring myself to pay $10 to go see them in the theater, and I give really don't care to get movies from Netflix that aren't worth my time. It's a waste.

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  7. I'm looking for a copy of the original (with Zarchi's commentary as you reccomended) before I see the remake. I've tried finding theatres in Vancouver but none are playing. So it looks like I'll have to wait until the remake hits DVDs.

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  8. Ah i was kinda wnting too see it, bc it's a horror movie, but wasn't too sure but i'll deffinatly check it out, though it's not pying in any nearby theatres im sure a bootleg ill apear witin the next few weeks.

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