I Spit on Your Grave: Review By harveycritic

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

Anchor Bay Films

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten

Grade: B

Directed By: Steven R. Monroe

Written By: Meir Zarchi (1978 screenplay), Jeffrey Reddick

Cast: Sarah Butler, Andrew Howard, Jeff Branson, Rodney Eastman, Daniel Franzese

Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 8/31/10

Opens: October 8, 2010

Decisions by the Supreme Court can be predictable. You just know well in advance, that the current court will vote 5-4 on some issues like the legality of Proposition 8 or whether corporations can donate unlimited amounts of money to candidates. Jurors are different. They can be unpredictable, even ignoring the law as related by the judge's instructions. For example: let's say that in summing up a case the judge tells the jury, "If you agree that the defendant committed premeditated murder, you may vote "guilty of murder one." Let's say you're sitting on a jury handling a case in which the defendant admittedly cut, chopped, broken and burned five men, all thoroughly planned out. That's murder one, no?

This idea comes out a poster for Meir Zarchi's 1978, movie now remade after thirty-two years which indicates that a woman had just "cut, chopped, broken and burned five men beyond recognition. But no jury would convict her." Would you give her a thumbs-down after seeing a tape that the victim recovers from the five pieces of white trash who repeatedly humiliate her, provoking her with "You're not good enough to drink with us?"then proceed to rape her, drive her naked into the woods, recapture her and continue jamming either themselves or material goods like a revolver into every orifice? I might if I saw both the tape of the violence done to her and another tape of the mayhem that she inflicted upon them one month later-giving them back tenfold what they did to her.

The "tenfold what they did to her" is the source of the massive worldwide censorship invoked against the 1978 film and, in fact, according to the production notes this updated version is even more convulsive. People attending this movie will be attracted by their own revenge fantasies, the same sorts who would go to midnight cult pics, maybe some women with a hangup about men. To describe the ways she wreaks havoc on each of her assailants one month after escaping from their clutches would give away just about everything, including the ingenious Rube Goldberg device she uses to put an end to two lives at the same time. She not coincidentally enforces her will on each of the men in the reverse order of their degree of guilt. A retarded handyman gets the modest penalty, at least in the sense that he is not tortured before being dispatched, while the most severe crime is dealt with in the concluding moments.

There are plot holes. After running naked in the woods in her escape, how could she have return to her home in the city without anyone's questioning her? She obviously decided not to contact the authorities who might enforce somewhat less of a sentence against the perps than a capital one. Also, how does she get the strength to overpower some of the assailants and concoct the terror upon them that will rivet one audience while disgusting others?

But plot is not the main thing. "I Spit On Your Grave" does not have what could justifiably be called a "plot," and in that the movie is not up to the complexities of Eli Roth's "Hostel 2." Sarah Butler, known for some TV appearances on CSI, engages well in her first full-length feature film as a writer who stupidly repairs to a cabin deep into the woods to get the peace and quiet to write. What, is something wrong with shutting the windows back in the city and turning on the A/C?

One bit of advice to the men: If you've just had a major argument with your wife or girlfriend, do not take her to "I Spit On Your Grave." Wait a couple of days.

Unrated. 106 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online