I'm going to be honest here: as much as I roll my eyes at the continued glut of pointless remakes the horror scene has to endure, I was less upset by the news that exploitation classic I Spit On Your Grave (1978) was getting the remake treatment. Truth be told, this is because I detest the original. I think Camille Keaton did an absolutely sterling job as Jennifer Hills; I can see why the film has been so influential; but to me, the sheer length and brutality of the rape scene was not adequately 'paid back' by the killings which follow. If it's represented as revenge then let's make it balance the offence. That Jennifer has to fuck them - again - before she can get close enough to inflict her vengeance has only ever added to my exasperation, so, I figured that if the remake redressed any of this, I'd certainly give it a watch.
I saw an early preview of I Spit On Your Grave (2010) during a midnight showing at the Abertoir Film Festival in Aberystwyth, West Wales. It certainly split the audience, and it certainly has its issues, but I will say I was pleasantly surprised. This is more of an equal opportunities exploitation film; it's polished, it's well-edited and feels very modern, but I see it very much as part of the exploitation movie genre, only with nastiness stacked fairly equally in both halves of the film. You will be able to make up your own minds on this when the film gets a general release next January (2011).
Most genre fans will be familiar with the plot: a young woman (impressively played here by Sarah Butler) heads out to the back of beyond to work on her novel, and gets attacked by a group of men before plotting some payback. In the original, the men of the piece are fairly two-dimensional; here, the script spends more time developing their characters, and this does affect the feel of the film. I heard criticism at the screening that this over-humanises them; it certainly humanises them to an extent, but I do not think this necessarily makes them sympathetic. The added detail shows them up as hypocrites, schemers, and people with a warped world view. Playing the sheriff is one of my favourite actors and a man I genuinely find a tad scary - Adam Mason favourite Andrew Howard, who juggles a functional family life with his worst excesses. The so-called 'retard' Matthew is also back and this time he's much more strongly-drawn: this character perhaps is a sympathetic one, seeming more of a victim - and also more rebellious - here. By the same token, Jennifer Hills here is less of the blithe character she is in her 1978 incarnation. In 2010 she laughs outright at the expense of one of the men when he makes a pass at her; she brings a sizeable stock of wine and a stash of weed to the cabin, and this time she fights back from the outset. Whilst this remake is hardly an intricate character study, I was interested and impressed with how they developed some of these aspects, and I did feel like it was a welcome addition to the film.
The rape scene itself could hardly be other than nasty: you still get the same feeling of increasing dread as well as physical pain, something which is increased by pitching another very petite young actress against (this time) more well-built guys. Although it's a lengthy scene, the film closes its eyes to some of the worst excesses by having Jennifer partially black out - that said, this is still difficult to watch, and I thought there was more of a suggestion of psychological harm here than in the original.
After this sequence the film - quite bravely I think - removes Jennifer from the action altogether for a good period of time; the implicated parties start looking for the young woman, but there's no sign. However, after this gutsy move, Jennifer returns, reinvented. There is a problem with this: all of the vulnerability which makes the film frightening to start with is reduced by her reincarnation as an omnipotent being which apparently has no trouble planning and executing quite intricate feats unaided. The one-liners she starts to spout are also fairly hard to accept, and do little to add tension to otherwise brutal scenes - because, from this mid-point, this film really delivers with some undeniably grisly tableaux (and in fact, the film from here on in feels like a safe premise being used to link together scenes of imaginative, cruel, protracted payback most definitely not explored in the original.) These scenes managed to make people wince as much (if not more) than Jennifer's original ordeal did and, although 'entertaining' might be saying too much, this did feel overall like an entertainingly grim piece of cinema which by and large knew its limitations, and redressed some of my original issues with the 1978 genre classic.
This is a keen, competent film and I liked the performances; although certain elements made me groan because the film had started to retread old ground, in a fair few satisfying ways it delivered a good mix of character and scenario, not to mention making use of some ingenious torture scenes which hit the mark, even in a horror scene definitely oversaturated with torture scenes. As far as remakes go, this did enough of the new whilst being mindful of its source material. It will no doubt divide its audiences wherever it goes, but I can't help but be pleasantly surprised with what Steven R. Monroe has done here.
Review by Keri O'Shea
| Released by Anchor Bay Films |