I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
Directed by Steven R. Monroe
A beautiful woman from the city, Jennifer Hills, rents an isolated cabin in the country to write her latest novel. Soon, a group of local lowlifes subject her to a nightmare of degradation, rape, and violence.
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7 films that influenced I Spit on Your Grave
What critics say influenced I Spit on Your Grave
No one is ever going to confuse Steven R. Monroe's remake of I Spit on Your Grave with The Passion of Joan of Arc, but this ostensibly silly horror quickie possesses a formal sophistication that would make Carl Theodor Dreyer sit up and take notice.
That’s partially because any new version of I Spit on Your Grave inevitably inherits many of the same issues that have dogged the original since it first surfaced on the grindhouse circuit in 1978.
I’m pretty sure that Steven Monroe wanted to be on set to remake Meir Zarchi ’s accidentally impactful rape-revenge “classic” I Spit on Your Grave.
In 1978, the original "I Spit on Your Grave" had the woman renting a cabin in upstate New York.
Ultimately, though, neither version of “I Spit on Your Grave” can be called a good movie.
This brings me to 1978's Day of the Woman , far better known under its later re-release title I Spit on Your Grave.
“I Spit on Your Grave” improves on Meir Zarchi’s 1978 original, but that’s not saying much.
Likewise, Jodie Foster made two movies like this, The Accused (1988), for which she won an Oscar, and The Brave One (2007).
But no matter how hard it tries to dress up its sadism in bogus pretensions, this ain't The Virgin Spring.
This kind of movie has been made before, aside from Zarchi's original, and it could be argued more effectively: Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960), and its unofficial American remake Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972), as well as the inferior remake of that film, from 2009.
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That is, along with John Carpenter's “Halloween,” it ushered in a new era of onscreen violence; and, unlike “Halloween,” its mayhem was designed to provoke, not merely through being extreme, but also through the baroque outrageousness of its execution.
This kind of movie has been made before, aside from Zarchi's original, and it could be argued more effectively: Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960), and its unofficial American remake Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972), as well as the inferior remake of that film, from 2009.
But in terms of real horror, nevermind sexual-politics provocation, "Grave" can neither re-create its predecessor's impact nor compete with stranger new beasts like Lars von Trier's "Antichrist."