I Spit On Your Grave 2
General Information: Released: September 20th, 2013 Special Theatrical Engagement in LA, and Direct to Blu-Ray Release
Opened: Not in Theaters
Metacritic: Not Yet Rated
Rotten Tomatoes Aggregated So Far: No Score Yet (Critics) & 62% Audience Anticipation IMDB Profile Movie Website Editorial Biases: Depending on where you stand in my home; my office, living room, den, Florida room (like a den, but full of floor-to-ceiling windows all around). You’ll be confronted with an enormous library of books, films, and comics; organized by genre, and immediacy of access for the general viewing and reading habits that I have. So if you happen to stand near my shelves (by the screen) my family, friends & I, watch most of our movies on; you might think I’m a psychopath. You’d be surrounded by thousands of DVD’s & Blu-Rays on Horror, Thrillers, and all of my obscure Gorno films (Gore/Torture Porn – films that love to rip people apart for various plot points). Same goes for my books, and comics. Heavy in obscure reading, with a lot of theological, and mythological reading on angels, demons, witchcraft, and general occultism that fascinates me.
This film is the sequel to the rebooted
“Day of The Woman” 1978 film, mainly known by its original title “I Spit On Your Grave” which was triumphantly unapologetic and fascinatingly brutal. I was extremely happy to see a sequel (if done properly), paying homage to the original material, and able to channel the same angered rage in all of us toward the antagonists. While some might consider a film like this a straight Rape-Revenge flick; I’d argue that is completely short sighted.
To say I had high expectations, and hopes for this film, especially after seeing the first production reboot would not be a stretch.
The Good The movie has an amazingly controlled pace. You gain all the basic details you need to connect to the characters with exacting immediacy. Almost as if the director has an exact (to the second) calculation of how much balance a characters past and present need to be shown on the screen. You learn very quickly who Katie is, what she wants in life, what she is struggling for, who she is as a person, and her general behavior toward the opposite sex very quickly. Yet the story is not rushed. It’s not like a twitchy pervert sitting in the corner waiting to be unleashed.
Reading my last sentence, I realized that comment could be construed as a slight toward
Chad Lindberg in the first movie, but he wasn’t a twitchy pervert; he was a twitchy, fearful, mentally disabled person. He was also pretty damn awesome!
The Bad Some of the antagonists are functionally stereotypical; possibly to make the conditions of the film parameters specific to the plot. However, I am not able to say it was state of plot driven; which usually can hurt a film, because we as an audience can catch those plot devices very quickly. Those devices take us out of the escapism of a film. For a horror film to have plot devices that do this, is even worse. You no longer have any imagination toward the fear or dread the film is trying to convey; it simply becomes funny, a desensitized depiction of horror that is now just a dark comedy.
One particular character, Georgy, had a very “Hey Bro!” type of dialogue and set of comments done in a very heavy accent, with seemingly polite execution. Perhaps this is a problem only in my mind, simply because I couldn’t help but reference a character from the Dave Chappelle Show. A skit character personifying Spam on the internet trying to improve the size of your penis and duration of your sexual stamina. “Hey Bro! I can make you Big and Fat!” In virtually the same exact accent and voice as Georgy.
While this is unfair to do to the film, it is a stereotypical reference, with stereotypical Americanized commentary that might have been used by the director and writers to convey a message. However, if I am anywhere near accurate (from a totally pulled-out-of-my-ass conjectured reference), then it is a very crude stereotype.
It doesn’t really hurt the movie, and in my opinion, dependent upon recognizing this obscure reference. But I see the stereotypes and the crude nature of a people marked by an awful discourse of human nature.
The Ugly It is extremely gory, and extremely explicit, holding nothing back in sight and sound to display the horrific issues of the film. This is a bad thing? No, it’s definitely not, however, it has not received a theatrical release, only getting 1 special theater engagement in Los Angeles; its release is almost entirely a home market release. This movie is so good; it deserves a wide release, but because of the rating it would gain, likely an NC-17, it would still be extremely limited in market. That is in effect, the ugly.
The Great The first film can be categorized as Rape-Revenge. This sequel goes absolutely over the top, and beyond, that concept. The promotional material says “2x the Revenge” – That is an understatement. We get a picturesque full detailing of the horrors this young woman endures in her brutally visceral, raw, unequivocal, and repeated, rape-assaults. We don’t see a watered down concept for an attack of this nature.
Many films have a brief understanding, understated display of sexual assault and rape. The typical screaming woman, that is frozen in fear, that barely fights back, while some horrid and disgusting human being grunts and pushes into her. What we get in this film is almost to deliciously violent and evil. I detest rape or anything that can hurt woman; yet I do love absolute portrayals of evil and depravity in a film. Only true horror films embrace the realities of the human condition.
This movie delves deeply into human depravity. Virtually no filters, no holding back on an artistically visual form of showcasing one of the world’s most horrific behaviors human beings can do to each other.
…and, Amazing? While the essential function of this film is to display the torture and rape of a victim, it is more to set the tonal understanding for the revenge this woman is going to hand out to her attackers. The first film showed a rape; while I don’t want to weaken the understanding of how horrid this act is. The first film didn’t really showcase the horror. We’ve seen rape on screen before, in many movies. The first film only showcased the same concept behind this act, seen before countless times. What we see here in this sequel goes far beyond, to literally cause us (as an audience) to want to kill the antagonists ourselves. To want their blood. To want to wallow in their entrails as they die slowly.
That is what is so amazing about this film. You as the audience will completely immerse yourself in the raging emotion to want these people dead. You may also forget for a moment it’s a movie.
The exquisitely meticulous manner in which Katie achieves her nearly medieval vengeance was dished out so beautifully, the creative and individual manners in which she chose to dispatch each of her foes will either cause you to cringe, cheer, or laugh in gleeful revelry.
What Might have Hurt This Film… I’m like a broken record with this topic. The extremely hyper-violent situations in this film are above NC-17 in nature and would warrant no release into the theaters, granted this an “Unrated” entry. However it will gain a theatrical release in LA for one limited engagement. It will be releasing September 20th on Blu-Ray, Redbox, and other VOD sources.
This is obviously not a gripe from me. I loved the purity of the evil and depravity this film chose to undertake. You can’t do that with an R rating, let alone a PG-13 rating. The only issue that would hurt the film is simply if it needed a theatrical release to recover its costs of production, which it did not.
Overall Verdict? Absolutely phenomenal display of violence, gore, rape, depravity, and a singular human nature based evil. It is a monument to torture-porn in a modern setting, among its contemporaries. It’s simply saddening that it is not getting a theatrical release for a broad horror audience to enjoy, due to the nature of the violence in the film.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and my expectations were exceptionally high. I don’t watch movies like this and measure the acting ability with the concept of expecting highly meritorious performances. Not at all. However, short of some stereotypical instances in character backgrounds, speech pattern, and behavior; the overall performances from each actor were exceptionally given for this type of genre film.
5 out of 5 Horror Geeks will love it!
Have you seen I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 yet? Are you planning to? Did this review help you? Do you agree, disagree? I want to hear from you! Comment, share, tweet, pin, whatever tickles your fancy. @EmanuelFCamacho