I Spit on Your Grave (2010) – Certainly simple, but not necessarily effective

I normally berate people for watching films where the subject matter is blatantly obvious from the title (such as ‘Snakes on a Plane’) and who then go on to say they didn’t like it.  I mean… what were these people expecting from a film with such an obvious giveaway as a title?  Anyway, when I sat down to watch (the remake of) ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ (2010), I was hardly expecting Shakespeare.  From what I knew of the original it was a revenge tale of a woman getting attacked, only to later return and take vengeance on those who had wronged her.  And, to be fair, I did get just that.  However, there’s a ‘however…’

I was indeed treated to a woman.  A gang of despicable hoodlums.  And a revenge segment.  So, I guess I got what I expected.  So why do I feel a little aggrieved?  Basically, this is one film that could have done with a little more in the way of ‘character development.’ Yes, I know that term is hardly widely-used in the horror genre and most of the time the only ‘development’ you get is when a character transitions from being alive and engaging in pre-marital s3x to sliced to pieces by a chainsaw. 

In ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ we have the woman – who is our protagonist and therefore good.  We know she’s good because, er, she’s our protagonist and so has to be, right?  Then we have the gang and they’re bad because  - yes, you guessed it – they’re just bad.  Thus conflict ensues.  And that’s about that in terms of plot.  Yes, if you’re looking for good gory revenge, you’ll certainly find it here.  Of course you’ll support our good-looking young heroine, but only because she gets involved in a horrible incident.  And, because of this, you’ll automatically hate the gang because they were the sickos who perpetrated it.

However, I just couldn’t help but cry out for a little bit more in the way of backstory for our protagonist and ‘motivation’ for our hideous antagonists.  Maybe what the film is saying is that some people are just bad and therefore beyond any deeper thought than that.  If that’s the case, this lot are totally bad through and through and deserve everything they get.

It's a bit of a 'film of two halves.' The first centres around our woman and shows the horrors she's subjected to.  However, once this is over she's - almost - written out of the story where we see the lives of those who did it to her.  Then she kind of stalks them in the background a bit like Jason Vorhees might.  It's never really made clear how, in the space of a seemingly short period of time, she becomes adept at trap-setting and ninja-style killing.  I guess that's something that's left up to the imagination.

Basically, I did know what I was getting when I sat down to watch this and I got what I knew was coming.  However, with just a little bit more writing and plot (maybe an additional scene here and there), this could have been turned from a – pretty forgettable – gory revenge tale into something that was actually more memorable for something other than being a deliberately disgusting remake of an old film that – also – was deliberately disgusting enough to shock many a cinema-goer.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights