There is a famous quote that says, ‘Live Well. It is the greatest revenge’. I was never completely convinced by this philosophy and having sat and watched this film’s protagonist Jennifer (Sarah Butler) mete out her own unique brand of justice to the scumbags who raped her, I’m not sure that she was convinced by it either.
When I first heard that Meir Zarchi’s 1978 original was to get the remake treatment I thought that the only possible reason anyone could have for doing so would be to exploit the legacy of controversy it had left behind. Then the optimist in me subdued the cynic and thought that perhaps Director Steven Monroe would do something interesting with what is (despite some claims to the contrary in recent years) very poor material. Badly directed, scripted and acted, Zarchi’s film has little to recommend it other than it’s notoriety. And to be fair to Monroe, he has made a film that in all technical aspects is a vast improvement. His version is well shot, well acted and boasts a gore quotient that outdoes the original by some margin. It’s a well made film.
Now I’m no shrinking violet and I can sit through most modern horror without getting my knickers in a twist about something being offensive. The genre is called horror for a reason. But ultimately all we have here is 107 minutes of a group of horror archetypes (a bunch of threatening southern country folk) degrading and abusing another horror archetype (the go getting city slicker alone in a cabin in the woods) before she turns the tables and degrades them even further. That’s it. No surprises and no intelligence (unless it’s the ingenious torments Jennifer devises to enact her revenge). I’d venture a guess that the about 80% of the films running time consists of somebody begging and pleading for mercy. It all gets a bit wearing.
However, the main difficulty I had with the film was the jarring contrast of the first half with the second. Jennifer’s revenge is carried out in ways that mirror the injustices inflicted on her by each of her attackers and they’re clearly designed to be entertaining. I might have found them entertaining myself if they hadn’t been preceded by half an hour of the most harrowing and brutal rape and humiliation, all filmed in a way that is completely incongruous with the ‘here comes the fun’ tone of the second half of the film. So much so that I suddenly become all too aware of being manipulated by a director who was saying to his audience, ‘Okay, I’ll let you enjoy yourself. But this is the price you’ll have to pay.’ Trouble is, I’m not sure it was a price worth paying. Manipulating the viewer is fine of course (Hitchcock was a master) but when it’s done so cynically and so crassly I couldn’t help but feel, well, all a bit grubby.
And just to throw my two penn’orth into the debate that this is a film about female empowerment, it isn’t. Jennifer is debased and dehumanised both by the torment she is forced to endure and then by the retribution she metes out to her attackers. This is not a woman who is ever going to move on from these events and lead any kind of normal, happy, fulfilling life ever again. In fact, I couldn’t help wondering if it would have made more sense to have had Jennifer come back from the dead, Jason Voorhees style, to wreak her vengence. It would certainly have been more in keeping with the tone of the last 45 minutes.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Ultimately, this is a film that stands or falls on the viewers ability to reconcile its first half with its second. It goes from brutal and disturbing to ridiculous and ‘fun’. But if you’re a fan of this kind of ‘set piece cinema’, chances are you’re going to go into this film with your eyes open and it’ll deliver pretty much what you thought it would. Just prepare yourself for the gruelling nature of the first hour. And definitely don’t make this the film you see on a first date. You won’t get a second.
