Movie Review: I Spit On Your Grave 2010 & The Woman 2011

I Spit On Your Grave (2010)

It isn’t everyday you get put up a post mentioning sodomy and rape of a beautiful girl unless you run a tabloid or a pornographic website so we are taking this opportunity with our review on I Spit on Your Grave to mention that yes a beautiful woman gets brutality violated not just once but many times by a bunch of small town chauvinistic sex crazed men who stereotype city women as being wild and loose. A failed attempt to get rid of the violated and humiliated victim and therefore the evidence leaves us with a revenge thriller that is far better than many available today. This remake if you can call it follows the same premise of the original in 1978 which caused quite a ripple in movie reviews and public opinion on what is deemed entertainment and socially acceptable in cinema back then. In Malaysia, the original version had been popularly distributed in the Adult section of videotape rental shops in the 80s (same with the other controversial movie of that period, Cannibal Holocaust), and in later years, VCD street peddlers.

I spit on your grave 2010

As you watch I Spit on Your Grave, it really is a horrific tale of writer Jennifer Hills, who takes a retreat from the city to a charming cabin in the woods to start on her next book. But Jennifer’s presence in the small town attracts the attention of a few morally deprived locals who set out one night to teach this city girl a lesson. They break into her cabin to scare her. However, what starts out as terrifying acts of humiliation and intimidation, quickly and uncontrollably escalates into a night of physical abuse and torturous assault. But before they can kill her, Jennifer sacrifices her broken and beaten body to a raging river that washes her away. As time passes, the men slowly stop searching for her body and try to go back to life as usual. But that isn’t about to happen. Against all odds, Jennifer Hills survived her ordeal. Now, with hell bent vengeance, Jennifer’s sole purpose is to turn the tables on these animals and to inflict upon them every horrifying and torturous moment they carried out on her… only much, much worse.

The remake isn’t quite as offbeat as Meir Zarchi’s original, but it’s certainly more brutal. To be frank, there’s not a whole lot that’s different between this remake and the original 1978 cult classic – just a few minor twists and turns and much different tone. This remake is a little grimier and darker, though it’s not as raw as the original.

This isn’t a long review because the movie doesn’t need much brain resources to understand. There is forced sex, there is nudity, there is bloody violence, and there is revenge. It is graphic. It is shocking. The vengeance of the rape victim is executed with all her fury on all her violators one by one. Suspension of disbelief is as expected when watching any action-horror-thriller movies, and even on Discovery and NatGeo channel these days. For a waif sized protagonist who is depicted as a writer, the character does have wild imaginations for torture contraptions and the skills of an engineer (and strength) to build them.

Should you watch it? Why not. This movie has the thrills, gore, shock, and decent enough acting to give you a rollercoaster of emotions. It’ll keep you entertained or disgusted.

If there this movie became a franchise, I wonder what the sequels would be named?

I spit on your grave twice

I spit on your grave again and again

I still spit on your grave

I spit on your grave: the final spit ..? (Take your pick)

The Woman (2012)

Following our review on I Spit on Your Grave, here is a movie about a feral woman who executes her wrath on her captor, a chauvinistic male lawyer who has his own bent reality on male dominance. While I Spit on Your Grave isn’t a very convoluted complex story to spellbind intelligent audiences, The Woman, behind its simplistic premise of a feral woman’s vengeance lies an interesting twist towards the end which even we didn’t expect to happen. I think the whole show was cleverly conceived by the director and scriptwriter.

There isn’t much explanation on the feral woman and I hope to see a prequel to provide some explanation. I think this movie has created a new type of femme fatale heroine. Family man and lawyer Christoper Cleek (Sean Bridgers) must do what he can to protect his family when he comes into contact with a feral woman (Pollyana McIntosh) living in the woods near his isolated country home. Through a series of harrowing encounters Cleek and his family quickly discover there is more to this woman than anyone would suspect and that sometimes the devil wears a handsome face. Forced to wear a dress, McIntosh’s dark-eyed wild woman learns to say “please” and “thank you” while obviously plotting to break her shackles and wreak bloody revenge on her captors. Wife Belle (Bettis) is a numb enabler, daughter Peg (Lauren Ashley Carter) carries a terrible secret, and son Brian (Zach Brand) is a dutiful student of daddy’s sadistic ways. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’’ Chris tells him in one scene, which leaves an awful lot of latitude.

The film, The Woman, was effectively scary and believably dark with a cool twist at the end. True horror genre junkies will dig it.

With so many horror and thriller movies filled with computer graphics today, it is certainly a welcome to watch The Woman and I Spit On Your Grave which had minimal computer assisted shockers and thrill factors. Less is best, and these shows will shock the pants off you, without all the special effects that horror genres are so dependent on these days.

 

 

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