Quote: "Woman always have to put up a fucking fight."
Trivia: The film features so much blood that, according to director Coralie Fargeat, the prop team would often run out of fake blood.
Rape-revenge has to be one of the most unpleasant genres of films in horror. Both Wes Craven's first film The Last House on the Left and the infamous I Spit on Your Grave are almost unwatchable. There is something so much more emotionally troubling about watching a rape in a film than watching a murder or even a torture in a movie. Unfortunately that is all too often why director's exploit this for shock and awe in their films and television shows. Luckily the movie Revenge, while being a rape-revenge movie, focuses much more on the revenge part of the genre and not the rape. There is sexual violence in the film, but it is used as a plot device to move the story forward in order to demonstrate the incredible strength and resiliency of the main character, Jen. It is her story and the men in the story quickly become her victims. The movie is much closer to the bloody, violent, and gritty Mad Max and Death Wish films of the 1970s rather than I Spit on Your Grave. Matilda Lutz, as Jen, is just as badass as Paul Kersey in Death Wish, possibly even more so. Jen is the very beautiful mistress of Richard, a French millionaire who takes them both to his getaway home in the middle of a desert. Their romantic holiday is interrupted when Richard's two millionaire friends, Stan and Dimitri, come early to begin their annual hunting vacation. Richard had hoped to keep Jen a secret but the four of them make the best of it with drinking and dancing. Jen also hides some Peyote for Richard in her necklace that their pilot gave to him. Everything is fine until the next day when, while Richard is gone, Stan propositions Jen. When Jen rejects Stan, he rapes her as Dimitri purposefully ignores her pleas for help. Richard eventually arrives, verbally chastises Stan, and tries to pay Jen off with a load of money. Not allowing Jen to go home, Jen threatens to tell Richard's wife about them. Richard hits Jen in a "how dare you?" and "who do you think you are" moment that is both an attack on her gender and her class which leads to a chase through the desert. When Jen comes to a cliff, Richard pushes her off the cliff and she falls impaling herself on a dead tree. Jen is able to free herself from her impalement by lighting the dead tree on fire, causing it to break. She's now free, but still with a chunk of the tree stabbed through her and is bleeding severely. The blood trail leads the three millionaire to a river where they finally lose the trail. The three split up and its here that Jen hunts them one-by-one. She first follows Dimitri to a spot where he stops to urinate. He gets upper-hand on her and tries to drown her but she's able to get use of her knife and stabs him through the eyes. Taking his gun and supplies, Jen hides out in a cave and remembering an offhand remark one of the millionaires made about a guy who cut off his own leg without feeling anything while on peyote, Jen takes the drug. While on the drug, Jen fights through visions of the millionaires and is able to remove the chunk of tree sticking out of her and cauterizes the would with the aluminum from a beer can emblazoning the beer's logo onto her stomach: a phoenix. Now healed, Jen goes off to hunt Stan whom she shoots with her hunting rifle, leaves broken glass on the ground which he lacerates his foot, and finally shooting him with a shotgun. Next up is Richard... I'm trying to avoid spoilers... it just gets even more amazing from here...
Before
After
Jen is such an incredible character. She is so sexy and beautiful and during the first part of the film and her character is so wrapped up in eroticism that I was confused how they were ever going to make her into the badass that she needs to be in order to make this revenge movie work. By the end of the movie, I could not believe they were the same person. This is one of the purposes of the film, to have us look at our own worldviews. But it is also great writing. She is a woman pushed too far. Like the image burned into her stomach, she rose from the ashes stronger than before. What is also interesting is that after Richard hits her at the beginning of the film, she does not have any dialogue throughout the rest of the film. Her quiet stoicism also helps to make her a formidable force.
While I wouldn't consider the Death Wish movies to be horror movies, this one certainly falls into that category. The entire film is a bloody mess. As she's impaled by the dead tree there are these great microphotographic shots of her blood dripping in slow motion upon an ant setting the feel for more blood that is to come. The scene where Jen rips the chunk of wood out of her stomach and blood continues to gush forth is another really bloody moment. But what really seals the deal is the final chase with Richard at the end. The rifle shot to the stomach leaves a bloody mess. As they chase each other from room to room, Richard and Jen are spilling more and more blood on the hardwood floors. Eventually Jen slips in the pool of blood and is unable to get up because there is so much of it. After watching the movie, I get why it said in the movie's trivia that the prop department kept running out of fake blood.
Lastly, I really like how the filmmakers added a bit of mysticism to the film. Most obviously, the phoenix which is a symbol of rebirth can be seen in Jen's character as she is reborn into a new stronger and violent creature. Her transformation even begins with fire when she burned the tree that was impaling her. The scene with the peyote also has lots of mystic elements to it. Peyote has been used by Native American tribes for centuries as a way to see new realities and communicate with the spirit world. Could this have had lead to Jen's singular focus, inner strength, and determination? Finally, there is a specific moment in the film where we see the Hindu god of revenge in front of Jen, helping to mirror what Jen has become on this journey.
An attack on rape culture and a new take on the well established rape-revenge movie, Revenge is the bloody story of a woman pushed too far. The movie is just badass. Seriously, watch it.
...what's your thoughts?
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