I’m The Real Victim Here: I Spit On Your Grave Remade and Revisited

Curiously, both the filmmaker and marketing team seem to have decided to make her a pure sex object until it’s time for her to be a killing machine. The poster depicts a beautiful and perfect ass, with the smudges “just so” in order to highlight the curves of the flesh. She is never seen as vulnerable or childlike as in the original film. Now, the redeeming factor of non-titillation has been rendered senseless and the crimes committed against her are more about destroying this perfect specimen rather than the pure control and violence that usually lie at the center of these types of crimes.

To further underline this thought, comparisons to a horse are thoughtlessly trotted out to spell out that this is about doing what you want to a beautiful “animal” and not an actual person. Just in case we didn’t get it yet. This only serves to put a distance between the protagonist/victim/heroine and us, rather than give her some much-needed depth. Strike one against empathy.

Her attempts to connect with the surroundings lead instead to “false scares” in an abandoned house, which then becomes her own killing grounds. Setting up her surroundings as something to be feared removes the immediacy of the original; it induced dread by suggesting that such horrors could happen anywhere and anytime, even in the golden-bathed glow of daylight. But the remake suggests that, by pure virtue of being a female alone and in the woods, there’s already a clear sense of danger, thus using stereotypical horror movie tropes that were already musty when used in 1960s Hammer productions.

Strangely, more time is now devoted to becoming further acquainted with the perpetrators of the crime rather than the actual victim. They are generic and conventionally attractive, rendering pointless yet another of the few redeeming characteristics of the original film. Those actors were normal and grimy-looking in a way befitting the overall look of the film. Here, they are subjected to more scare tactics through the overly obvious attempts (and failures) at creating some sort of realistic or believable white-trash set design so that we GET IT EVEN MORE.

The 1978 version has the protagonist specifically approaching her attackers in a way that connects to not only how they treat their surroundings but how she fits into those surroundings in relation to them. It was not fun to watch, but it made a sickening sort of sense in that she was able to re-connect with the nature around her. In the remake, there is far too much telling not enough showing. Instead we are forced to suffer through goofy, on-the-nose commentary regarding action and inaction and the numbing effects of media; for example, when the man with the camera “witnesses” his own death before his eyes are literally plucked out. Strike two, against not insulting the audience’s intelligence.

In fact, the introduction of a character in a position of power who can potentially help the victim is revealed to be the worst of the lot, and in fact, the nihilistic leader of these quickly-sketched men. The line between authority and safety is blurred even further as he dominates everyone through his strength and pure black cruelty. Ironically, the introduction of this character renders a few others irrelevant, making the impact of their deaths all the more lifeless. Also, by simply having this character represent a temporary lifeline, it takes away the sentiment from the original that the victim never sought or even trusted help, but did it all on her own . . .

The most perplexing thing about all of this isn’t the fact that almost every factor of the original film differs 180-degrees from the remake, but that the filmmaker of the 1978 version, Meir Zarchi, is an executive-producer on the 2010 version. Rather than thanking his supporters by expanding upon his original theme, he goes down the sexist, stupid, and typical horror movie road. He misses the opportunity to provide a commentary on what it is like to be rendered a sex object by the media in the present day and how that informs a woman’s day-to-day life, including how she operates when away from the comfort of her own home. Zarchi didn’t find it necessary to connect with the audience in a new and even more valid way; he decided that the person taking over his reins needed to focus on what modern horror directors think is scary: discounting and disregarding the intelligence of your audience. Make it pretty, make it dumb, make it easy to forget.

If you would like to see the remake of I Spit On Your Grave to decide for yourself, it was released February 8 on DVD and Blu-Ray by Anchor Bay Films.

Pages: 1 2