Alright, I’m not going to beat around the bush. This was one of the most disgusting, disturbing, and violent films I’ve ever seen in my life, and if there’s any sadistic horror film that I wish that I could completely un-watch, this would no doubt be the one. This film made me physically ill, and if you have even a slightly weak stomach for gore you need to avoid this. Okay, now that you’ve decided whether or not you’re going to see it, let me try and elaborate. This little blurb will contain spoilers, but I’ll warn you before I get into spoiler territory.

Basically, this is one of those films that is impossible to enjoy watching, yet is undeniably well made. However, and this may sound shocking, this makes the original film look really subtle and tastefully done by comparison. The original film (and this) tells the story of a city woman going out to the country in order to write her new novel. She gets attacked, assaulted, and raped by a group of rednecks, and after they leave her for dead she recovers and proceeds to kill them. It’s the prototype for the rape/revenge film, which was inspired by films like Straw Dogs and (mostly) Deliverance. In the original, the rape/sexual assault/beating sequences roughly took up half the running time of the film. Here, the sequence lasts for about half an hour but still manages to be even more disturbing and hard to watch. I mean, they do everything. They burn her with lit matches, they humiliate her, they force her to dance, they beat her to a bloody pulp, and then eventually they rape her in every orifice. The whole sequence is extremely emotional and really really hard to take. It gets to the point where it isn’t even a horror film anymore. The sequence feels like voyeurism. I won’t ruin the worst things that they do, but trust me it is really bad. Also, in this film, they manage to get a fifth wheeler (a county sheriff who happens to be married with one child and a second on the way). What was the point of making the rape sequence so damn realistic? I mean, I know that the filmmakers were trying to justify the actions of the main character later on in the film, but I would expect this kind of rape scene from an independent art film than from a horror film. It’s difficult to explain what I mean without spoiling the sequence. Let me just put it to you this way. Often times in film, rape scenes are shot like sex scenes. They often still have a sexual charge to them. Irreversible is a major exception to that. THIS is another. This rape scene, despite being shorter than the one in the original, goes on far too long.

So anyway then we get to the scenes of revenge, where she proceeds to kill these men in cruel and sadistic ways. This is when my major problem with the film comes into play. These scenes, believe it or not, are even more difficult to watch than the rape scenes. I’m talking impossible to watch. The ways in which this woman gets these men back are far more sadistic than they need to be. Again, they go on way too long and feel less like scenes of revenge and more like the Marquis de Sade meets Cormack McCarthy. I mean, this film made me cry. I felt sad for myself for watching it and sad for the people who are going to watch it thinking that it’s just a horror film. These scenes are gory as hell, relentlessly explicit, and frightening in their realism. Covering your eyes won’t help. The sounds are even worse. The film’s ending left me depressed, sad, and hateful. This is an effective exploitation horror film! It’s, like, the rape/revenge film from hell. If you are in the mood for a disquieting, sad, horrible film, this is the one to see. I mean, I look at other horror films that I’ve seen lately, Antichrist, A Serbian Film, The Loved Ones, and none of them are as gory or as depressing as this. Antichrist, as hard to watch as it was sometimes, was stunning in it’s emotional baggage, it’s performances, it’s woodland setting, and in it’s imagery. A Serbian Film was a film that left you feeling violated and depressed at the end like this one did, but in addition to that it gives you a lot to think about with what all the violence may or may not mean. The Loved Ones was beautifully deranged, scary as hell, gory as a motherfucker, unpredictable, and undeniably entertaining in that John Waters sort of way. This film, I Spit on Your Grave, is as shocking as a rape/revenge horror film can be. For that, I appreciate. One thing I especially appreciated was how she was completely different from Camille Keaton in the original. In the original, Keaton, even after being raped and assaulted, still looks beautiful and even uses her body as a weapon and as a tool to lure all the men to her so she can kill them. In this film, the girl looks like a walking zombie. She looks fucked up, beaten up, ugly, muddy, and hollow. She doesn’t use her body as a weapon in this like the girl does in the original. I really appreciated that element too. However, there is one humongous problem with it that keeps me from completely appreciating it and that keeps me from giving it a higher rating than I ultimately will give it.

THIS IS WHEN I GO INTO SPOILER TERRITORY. FOR ANYONE WHO DOESN’T WANT THE FILM SPOILED FOR THEM, DO NOT READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH. THIS ISN’T A HUGE SPOILER IF YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE ORIGINAL, BUT IT IS STILL A SPOILER NONE THE LESS.

Why the fuck did she have to kill the mentally handicapped guy? Okay first of all, during the rape sequence, he is the only one who doesn’t want to do it. He even tries to fuckin’ help her! What those men did to him was sexual abuse. There’s no two ways about it. They physically force him to rape her. You can tell that he doesn’t enjoy any second of it, and after it’s over he spends the rest of the scene in the corner of the house vomiting and crying his eyes out. I felt extremely sorry for him and I didn’t think that he deserved to get killed. After the sequence is over, he even experiences all of the same emotional trauma and despondency that many victims of sexual abuse and rape experience. I felt for him and was actually really hoping that she wouldn’t do it. After she does what she does to him, I immediately lost all sympathy for her. I just wanted the film to be over. That pissed me the fuck off.

Anyway, aside from that, it’s a good, fucked up exploitation film. If that’s your forte, check it out. You’re sure to be blown away. It’s a disgusting as hell film and, like I said, I wish I could unsee it. However, it’s well made and it’s effective. It pissed me off, but I still appreciate the fact that I had a strong reaction to it, even though my reaction was mostly contempt.