September 21, 2018
Written by: Coralie Fargeat
Starring: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Kevin Janssen, Vincent Colombe
Budget: $2,900,000
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.
