Revenge

If you dive into my catalog of lists, you'll find a list called The Bottom 10. These are the 10 worst movies I've ever seen. Like all my lists, this list is always subject to change, but it rarely does. The movies that get that low down in the count are the ones that make me legitimately angry and insulted at their existence. Of the bottom 10, 3-10 are up for grabs, and have changed repeatedly over the years. Batman vs. Superman was once on it. Annie Hall and Private School sit just outside it. #2 (Garden State, if you're curious) has yet to be threatened, and while I doubt it'll ever be unseated, I do have to concede that it is possible. But #1 will always be #1. Nothing will ever come close. It is the rape/revenge exploitation abomination I Spit On Your Grave. It should be enough to say that the movie's audacity to spend thirty whole minutes of its 102-minute run time documenting the most realistic-looking rape scene in cinematic history qualifies it for this spot, but there's more. If thirty minutes of rape presented as content in a product meant for entertainment wasn't enough to make you question the continued existence of the human race, the movie continues its stunning lack of decency by having the group force a mentally handicapped person to participate in the rape, and then completes the hat trick of offensive obliviousness by trying to pass off the main character's systematic murder of her rapists as some kind of feminist victory that makes watching all the rape okay. I think critic Luke Y. Thompson of The New Times had the most effective takedown of this when he made the comparison that saying Jennifer's victory in the movie is pro-woman is like saying "cockfights are pro-rooster because there is always one left standing". Unlike other horror sub-genres, the rape/revenge sub-genre has never evolved past its exploitative roots, and really, it can't. It's based on exploitation, violation, and retribution. It's in the damned label. The elements are necessary for the movie to function, otherwise, it isn't a rape/revenge movie. There is no opportunity for evolution. I bring all this up because, for several years now, I've heard how Revenge is that evolution. It is the thinking person's rape/revenge horror movie. It was written and directed by a woman, Coralie Fargeat, so it has to be different! It won't focus on the rape, and it won't objectify or demean the woman, and it won't put the viewer in the rapist's point of view. This will be a real feminist rape/revenge movie, they say. Strap in, folks, because this is going to be a long review. There is a lot to tear apart, because all of that is complete and utter bullshit. I will concede that Revenge does not focus on the sexual assault the way Spit does. That may be its only saving grace in how it tells the story. We still kinda, sorta see glimmers of it, and we hear it for a moment, but we don't see it the way Spit uncomfortably forces the viewer to witness it at length. No, instead, Fargeat sexualizes and diminishes actress Matilda Lutz in completely different ways! Here's what we know about her character Jennifer prior to the SA: She's willing to be a married man's side piece. She wants to live in LA because it's where "anything is possible". [further character description missing] Jennifer doesn't even speak for the first seven minutes of the movie. We see her welcome her lover to the house they're staying in with oral sex before we hear her say a single word. She is constantly in bikinis or underwear and tiny shirts or whatever can reveal her petite frame. I can't recall a single skirt or pair of shorts or anything that isn't very tight, body-hugging, spray-painted-on bikini bottoms. And in case you're wondering, yes, we do get a nude scene for absolutely no reason, as part of the prelude to the rape, when one of her lover's buddies spies on her changing. There is absolutely no need to show Lutz naked. It does nothing for the movie, and feels there just to convey how hot she is. There is no character depth whatsoever pre-SA. Jennifer is a seemingly air-headed, sex-hungry ingénue. So what is she after she's raped, beaten, and left for dead? Umm ... she seeks revenge, like the title says. And that's about it. There is no indication in either the script or Lutz's acting that Jennifer grows or learns something about herself in the process of this. Hell, the movie STILL sexualizes her by constantly panning up and down her body, which, by the halfway point, is clad only in a sports bra and boyshorts underwear that cling to her ass like a mountain climber whose pitons have just come loose. There's just rape and revenge. The two fundamental ingredients -- almost, by design, the ONLY two ingredients -- this genre has ever bothered with. Where is this bold, feminist vision of this genre? Where is the subversion of tropes? Why does the movie continue to focus on showing us Jennifer's body? I've seen some defenders of this try to say that the three men all represent different aspects of toxic masculinity, which is some desperate reaching to assign this movie value it does not deserve. YOU SHOULDN'T NEED TO GIVE THE RAPISTS IN RAPE/REVENGE MOVIES ANY ADDITIONAL MOTIVATORS TO BE HATED. THEY'RE RAPISTS. Yeah, only one is in this case, while another of the trio let it happen, and the third (her lover) decided trying to murder her was better than calling the cops, but still, they're all the worst excuses for men. Trying to assign symbolic value to each one of them is a hat on a hat. One is a rapist, one enabled a rape, and one covered it up with attempted murder. They're all bad people. Stop gilding the lily in an effort to give this movie more depth than it has, or deserves. Fargeat has done nothing different with this genre from anything else anybody else has done, minus removing the most visually troubling aspect of it. Lah-dee-dah. I'm struggling to feel the imprint of a female creator on this. So, if the movie still over-sexualizes its only female character, and never tries to examine the men in any way, how does this movie subvert any expectations or genre tropes? What is it doing differently, besides not showing the first half of the sub-genre's slash-based label? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to not see rape, but when the movie is heaped with praise for being this bold take on the genre, it literally feels like she took I Spit On Your Grave, cut out the rape scene, filled in a bunch of meandering, self-indulgent, artsy shots, lingered on some other scenes a bit too long, and called it a day. How is that better? How is that different? Congratulations, you took the guitar solo out of a song and put in a drum solo instead. You brave pioneer. You singular visionary. I am in awe ... at how so many people have been swindled by this transparent bullshit. I mentioned the artsy shots in passing, and I feel like I need to give that the business a little more. I'd say Fargeat's indulgence in artsy-fartsy nonsense is borderline intolerable, but it passed the border a long time ago and has never looked back. Why did we need a twenty-second shot of a close-up of lead antagonist Richard riding his dirt bike at night, lit up with red light? This isn't Tron, Coralie, get on with it. If I wanted trippy colors, I'd look in a kaleidoscope. Ooh, a shot of an apple Jennifer took one bite of, and it's browning! Ooh, another shot, and it's even more brown, and we're close up! A third shot and now there's an ant on it! What the hell am I watching? I'm sure there's some intent of importance, but symbolism is another area of film making where is Fargeat is both up her own ass and also stunningly incompetent. When Jennifer needs to cauterize a wound, she cuts open a beer can, flattens it out, and heats it. The beer can has an eagle on it, wings spread wide as if in mid-flight. Somehow, despite the fact that the image is printed on the can and not an embossed surface, an imprint of the bird is left on her body, and because there was a bunch of blood, it now looks like a phoenix. Get it? Because she was nearly dead, and now she's rising up? Well, if you didn't get it, Fargeat will ham-handedly show it to you again and again and again and again, just in case you were, I don't know, looking at your phone or getting a drink or something the first six times. But she's also wildly inconsistent with her efforts at symbolism. When the first of the trio -- the one who saw the rape happen and did nothing -- is killed, it is by way of his eyes being stabbed out. I figured "okay, the kills will be poetically tied to their roles, so the rapist will get castrated or something". Nope, shot in the head. It is stunning how Fargeat manages to be both inconsistent AND ignorant at the same time. But then again, she also misses so many details in her script, I have to wonder if she understands basic logic. Like the amazing amount of blood Jennifer loses after the attempt murder; the trio follow her blood trail for what seems like forever, and the amount of blood on the desert ground is enough that you'd think they were chasing a leaking blood-mobile. A wooly mammoth would've bled out, and yet here she is, pressing on like it's a flesh wound. How does Jennifer see the reflection off a mirror from far away, but the guy with the mirror doesn't see the reflection off her binoculars? Since when is peyote an anesthetic? Wouldn't it heighten pain receptors, especially if someone is already in a panicked state of mind? When Richard and Stan find Dimitri dead in the river with his eyes gouged out, Richard plans to tell the police it was a hunting accident that happened while he went off alone. Richard is supposed to be this cunning, intelligent man; how is he going to sell that story? Did Dimitri trip and fall into two dinner forks out in the wild? A well-armed coyote? I could probably list half a dozen more examples of Fargeat's sloppy writing and lack of attention to detail, but I think you get the picture by now. And as for Jennifer herself? This bold feminist icon? She's an average Final Girl. Blood-soaked, sure. Goes through hell? Absolutely. Fights like a demon? Damned right. But don't get it twisted, there is no depth to her at all. She starts off as an airhead bimbo and becomes a warrior because she's left for dead in the desert. I feel sick for having to give I Spit On Your Grave a point here, but at least that movie's lead had more character to her. She doesn't have to take revenge, and even goes to church and begs God for forgiveness for what she's about to do. Jennifer's fight to survive doesn't come from some deep, hidden wellspring of steely resilience; she's in a desert, and the only way out is through the three men who tried to kill her. Anybody would try to fight in her position. I give Matilda Lutz credit for giving all that she can to a thankless role that has all the depth of a thimble, but has just as many holes as one, too. Jennifer is, at the end of the day, no different from your average slasher final girl. I didn't expect Revenge to live up to the hype, but I did hope I'd see something that other people seem to see in it. But I am left wondering how anybody sees anything of value at all in this. I don't see the supposed subversion of genre tropes that turn this kind of movie on its head. I don't see a distinct new heroine character. I don't see bold, inventive direction. I don't see intelligent writing. I see someone who has taken the pickles off a Big Mac and is trying to pass it off as a bold new culinary frontier. Revenge lacks that one element that makes its sub-genre so problematic and offensive, but its undelivered-upon promised revolution of the sub-genre may make it more infuriating to watch than something like I Spit In Your Grave. That, at least, was tacky and exploitive and could be easily dismissed on that basis. Revenge lures in the viewer with a siren's song but is unwilling or unable (your pick which) to fulfill those ambitions, and that makes it something that, while not as noxious or offensive as Spit, is something Spit could never be, and possibly something far more intolerable: Revenge is boring.