In “I Spit On Your Grave,” young pageant-ready novelist Jennifer Hills seeks solitude outside city limits, eager to complete construction of her next work. She stops at a gas station, filling up the tank just as a group of local men gawk and linger, objectifying the nubile beauty from what they would consider a faraway land. These locals, covered in lower-class grime and elbow grease, are the malevolent male gaze, and they seek the debasement and the degradation of the young woman not only for who she is, but what she stands for. A symbol of untouched beauty and, judging by her revealing wardrobe, open expression, Jennifer’s final crime in the eyes of these men is her vehicle. She is in transit, merely stopping by, her transportation offering an escape from her unfortunate situation. She is going places. These boys are not.
In 1978, Meir Zarchi’s “I Spit On Your Grave” began with this stripped-down premise, but like other low budget grind house filmmakers, his education wasn’t steeped in filmmaking. As such, the original ‘Grave,’ like other horror pictures of the era, has a distinct flavor and rhythm — an ugly picture that drew its share of controversy, the movie, in its more horrific moments, has a quality that’s not entirely filmic as much as it is volatile and savage. Harrowing sequences of violence play out with a clumsy gravity. Attempts at realism that likely don’t pass the authenticity test still ring with the threat of a more unique kind of violence, borne out of a violation most viewers don’t imagine in their darkest fears. Even today, it’s uneasy, upsetting viewing.
The new “I Spit On Your Grave” (or “Grave ‘10”) is helmed by first-time filmmaker Steven R. Monroe. While Zarchi may have had a passing knowledge of other shock-horror films of that era, Monroe appears to have seen the original “I Spit On Your Grave” many times. He’s also seen “Friday the 13th” and “Cannibal Holocaust.” He probably has a row of DVD’s from the “Saw” series on his bookshelves. He’s from the film school generation, and “Grave ‘10” suggests that he never stood a chance behind the camera trying to tell a story that ostensibly means something. His reference point isn’t the shock of reality, or even the righteous fear that fueled the earlier “I Spit On Your Grave,” but rather movies.
So when Jennifer Hills drives into this small town, it’s not seen through the prism of an actual horrifying tableau of sexualized cultural rebellion. It’s a movie: as played by the model-pretty Sarah Butler, Hills is ready for her Hollywood closeup. The backwoods goons who threaten sexual violence are artificially dirtied-up central casting mopes, with acting-class stutters and practiced hunchbacks. When she emerges from her car, we see her from the males’ point of view. The camera loves her. The camera hates her.
Discussing a remake by consistently referring to the original is a practice that bears little reward, since “Grave ‘10” is made to respond to modern sensibilities. Fortunately, the original “Grave,” a feminist talking point, is a skeleton of a movie. The brutes follow Jennifer home, and proceed to rape her onscreen for what feels like an eternity, only to be stunned when she survives the attack, hunting them down one by one. It’s revenge cinema as catharsis, but it’s also a B-picture that gains relevance from its superficial values and the talking point it inspires, not because the film has a lasting impact as great art. Few films have taken such a hopeless view of the cycle of violence, where our heroine, brutalized and vengeful, metes out her own violent justice. As a result, few films also inspire such outright hostility: even supporters of Zarchi’s original vision flinch at revisiting the picture anytime soon.
A note on the the extended attack and rape, which takes up a good quarter of the movie. Hills is alone in her cabin when she hears a commotion, and she searches in the dark for its origins. Out of the shadows emerge the gas station attendants, who have been able to sneak into the cabin silently, get between Hills and her laptop computer, and re-program her background image with their faces. With one horror movie convention, they cease to be real people, and now take the role of unseen, borderline supernatural boogeymen.
As they close in on her, the camerawork switches from fixed shots to a handheld approach and back again, movie techniques to distance ourselves from the horrifying violence about to come. We are about to experience the defilement of a young girl, and Monroe can’t avoid film school vanity, endlessly finding recycled ways to alter our perception of events, any attempt to distance ourselves from an upsetting rape sequence. More pointedly, it tries to reframe “realistic” sexual violence as no different than the average gruesomeness of horror film bloodletting. In a bit of boneheaded non-commentary, one character constantly holds a top-of-the-line camcorder to capture the entire attack, making one rapist a low-fi filmmaker in his own right.
Monroe’s artistic dishonesty continues with Hills’ survival, as she vanishes, going underground and inexplicably returning as an avenging spirit of retribution. Her rape, the film argues, has strengthened her, turning her into a murderous sadist with inexplicable resources that can now tie down her attackers in a series of increasingly elaborate death traps. The stings on the soundtrack suggest that there should be suspense, but the fate of our villains is never in question: the reborn Hills is in no mood to take prisoners.
In the original, the lasting effect of the rape sequences weighs down on the viewer, who can only watch the ensuing revenge killings with a numb reaction. The sexual exploitation of our lead character, the film argues, can never be undone by any amount of violence done to her attackers. The new film, curiously, takes a less graphic approach to the rape sequences, saving its malice for the utterly horrifying last act killings: the argument implicit is that viewers remain squeamish about sex, but are more than willing to embrace the theme of escalation when it comes to violence. “Grave ‘10” is being released unrated this weekend, but what rating could it possibly deserve? It’s irredeemable, ignorant garbage of the lowest possible denominator, devoid of scares, insight, or verve, replicating when it can’t create, indulging in cowardice under the pretense of commercial interests — that being the ten people who remember the original title and don’t mind wading through the swamp of their most base instincts to enjoy rape-as-rollercoaster. It’s a picture of low integrity, one that despises its audience and demeans the very craft of filmmaking. This is inhuman art, and we can’t imagine anyone with the pretense of standards offering an endorsement. [F]