I Spit On Your Grave

"What the fuck?" There's a lot to say about this movie, but I... I just don't know what the hell... wow.

I've seen a lot of movies. I've seen a lot of horror, a lot of action, and a lot of comedy, but nothing I've ever watched previously really compares to this movie and how I reacted to it after the credits rolled.

I had never heard of I Spit On Your Grave, a remake of a 1978 thriller/gore-fest of the same title (although it was also released under another title, Day of the Women). My roommate put it on one night and, honestly, I had no interest in watching it at all... I just wanted to go to the bar. In the end, I'm glad I did because this was a film that everyone should see- it's that insane.

Before I get into the film itself, let me point something out: I watched this movie in the company of three girls. Probably not the best choice, as the entire film is about the brutal gang rape of a female and her ensuing revenge on her attackers. Also, I enjoy yelling at the television while movies play and I usually root for the bad guys- maybe this wasn't the best movie to cheer on the baddies...

Officially put in the rape/revenge genre, Grave follows the story of Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler), a writer who sets out to a secluded cabin for the summer to write her next great novel. The beginning of the film follows her around as she: writes, sun-bathes, drinks, walks around half naked, runs around half naked without a sports bra on, smokes weed... that's pretty much all. Oh! Her sink is broke or some shit, so she calls a plumber.

This is where the movie takes a crazy turn. Note to the female readership: never call a plumber when you're an attractive 20-something hottie alone in the woods.

So the plumber, Matthew (who's a little... slow) goes to Jennifer's cabin to fix her plumbing. She rewards him with a kiss, and he absolutely freaks the hell out. He runs out and Jennifer is left totally confused as to what exactly just happened. We next see Matthew meeting up with his friends (who treat him like shit) and he tells the story of the girl giving him a kiss- one of his friends, Stanley (Daniel Franzese, the gay friend from Mean Girls), reveals to the group that he has a video of Jennifer changing and proceeds to show the crew a nighttime shot of her in her underwear.

Hearing Matthew's tale and seeing the video, the gang decides to head over to Jennifer's cabin that night to have some fun with her. The leader, Johnny (soap star Jeff Branson) is mad because the rest of his crew made fun of him, claiming that a girl as good looking as Jennifer could never get with a guy like him.

To make a long, uneasy and a bit horrible story short, the crew breaks into Jennifer's cabin and begin to torment her. Just as they are about to rape her, she escapes and runs through the woods. There, she stumbles across a police office by the name of Storch (Andrew Howard). Storch leads Jennifer back to the cabin to investigate her claims that guys attacked her. Once they get back, however, we see that Storch is in cahoots with the bad guys and shit gets REALLY crazy.

A long and drawn out rape scene ensues in the cabin and then continues on into the woods. The scene ends with Storch about to shoot Jennifer, but at the last second she jumps off a bridge and into a river. The gang never had a chance to kill her, but they all think she would have drowned in the water because she was savagely beaten and raped.

Turns out, that's not the case and shit's about to get REAL.

Jennifer is gone for a month and then stuff starts to happen that make the guys think she's still alive. The first to confirm this theory is Matthew, who... wait. I can't let you know what she does!

The revenge Jennifer gets, which is the best part of the entire movie and what everything leads up to, is God damn EPIC. I won't get into the details here because it's one of those things you really need to see for yourself (words just don't do it justice), but some of the shit she planned for these assholes was jaw-dropping and extremely fitting. Here's a short list of some of the stuff she unleashed on the redneck rapist pricks:

A noose
Fish-hooks through eyelids
A shotgun and a mans rectum
A more than graphic combination of teeth and pliers
A BEAR TRAP
A bathtub full of water and lye
A horse bit, some rope, some hedge clippers and a man's ding-dong

By this point in the movie, everyone is waiting to see how crazy her revenge is going to get. It was all fitting to each character, who all wronged her in their own way.

One of the more interesting parts of this film was watching it with girls. I never realized how different movies can be from a male and female perspective, and this was definitely what I considered a learning experience. I'm sitting there laughing while the rednecks are terrorizing the girl (it's a movie and the parts before the rape scenes were pretty funny), the girls were genuinely freaking out and covering their eyes. Claims of never being able to sleep ever again where uttered. But as the movie went on, we all felt bad for Jennifer despite the fact that the character wasn't really developed that well- she was just this poor victim that we all wanted to see be redeemed. When the main character started to get her revenge, everyone, especially the girls, were really into the movie.

There's a scene at the end where Jennifer has Storch tied up with a shotgun halfway up his ass. He thinks Jennifer has his daughter and begins to plead with her, saying "Please [let her go?]... she's just an innocent girl." In complete unison, all the girls watching the movie with me and Jennifer on the screen say "So was I".

That right there should say just about everything there is to say about this movie.