Review of I Spit on Your Grave

The people who seem to like this movie try and tell us that it is alright to show the degradation this woman goes through because she gets revenge. They want to say that it empowers women because she kills them for what they did to her. While some very basic revenge movies do have the pay off that we are looking for when the victim kills the people who violated them, this movie does not empower anyone. This is sadistic violence followed by more sadistic violence. Any rape survivor will tell you that the way they feel empowered is not by killing their attackers, but by surviving and taking back their life. Even for a rape revenge movie, where we expect a violent revenge, this had our heroine going beyond revenge and acting as disgustingly as her attackers. So she is empowered because she has sex with the one guy that couldn't "finish" during the rape and hanging him right after he "finishes"? The rape goes out of it way to show her naked as much as possible, and to rape and sodomize her in as many ways possible. When we get to the revenge, she degrades herself by putting herself into sexual situations that wouldn't even be possible with THESE idiots. Rape is about power. No rapist is going to put himself in any of those situations, situations that are only presented here to try and titillate the audience. Some say that she has basically lost her mind at the end. How is losing your mind considered empowering. For her to do what she did, or if she has indeed lost her mind or morals, shows that the rapists have won.

I just want to make it clear that I like a good revenge movie. I don't mind violence in movies, even sexual violence. But there needs to be a reason for the violence. Irreversible showed how bad violence was whether it was the rape or the revenge. This is simply the worst kind of exploitation film that tries to justify itself by trying to attach some sort of statement.