I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2: VIEWERS ARE THE ONES ACTUALLY TORTURED

So I just sat through the movie I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 and have to say for a sequel it equals the first film. That is to say if you found the first film offensive and made with the sole intent of doing nothing more than attempting to be controversial and vomit inducing. Hmm maybe I should explain.

I've never been fond of the whole "torture porn" genre of films. Amazingly those who make these types of films get offended when they are placed in that category which is kind of surprising since these easily offended more often than not try to offend their viewers. When the film HOSTEL gained notoriety I went to see it and felt like I needed a shower afterwards. Most of these films have the thinnest of plot lines and almost all of the story involves trying to make an excuse to show people being tortured. I could be wrong but when people like Dick Smith, Rob Bottin and Rick Baker were attempting to push further the art of make up effects my guess is it wasn't so that a movie could focus around effects of this sort. After HOSTEL things didn't change much. Locations and victims perhaps but not a search for a more in depth story or for that matter a story at all.

The original film I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was considered ground breaking because something like this had never been done before. Feminists flocked to it because you had a female character abused by males who then went on a revenge streak that culminated in all of her abusers dying and at least on castrated. I was never a big fan of the film but at least recognized it as a trail blazer and something that hadn't been done before. The remake was something else. It didn't attempt to further the story or make it new but simply retread the original story with one exception. Since time had gone by they could now up the ante when it came to how far they could go. Of course the majority of the things they went further on were the things done to the woman. I still wish someone would explain to me how stripping a woman down to no clothing, showing her being repeatedly raped and then tortured furthers the cause of feminism even if her protagonists all get their just desserts.

So let's talk about this new movie. Before I do so realize that this review will include some MAJOR SPOILERS so stop now if this is your type of film. I'm offering quite a bit in the hopes that most people will read and then be repulsed enough to bypass this film. The old characters are tossed aside and in their place are new ones. Had I been a bigger fan of the first film I would have realized that this wasn't the same character. Not realizing that I kept wondering how someone who went through all the things in the first movie could be stupid enough to do what she does here. New "heroine" Katie is a hostess at a restaurant in New York who wants to be a model. An agent tells her the pictures she has are too Midwest (always a bad thing according to people on both coasts) and need to be edgier. Katie sees a sign posted on a bulletin board stating that models can get their photo work done for free. Yeah, nothing seems wrong about something like this offer in New York.

Going to the photo shoot Katie's photographer and friends all have eastern European accents, another immediate sign that things won't go well. Except that characters in movies never notice bad signs. When she doesn't follow through with some of their requests she leaves. At home she wakes to find one of these guys in her apartment who then ties her up and rapes her. When her friend the custodian tries to help, he's killed. The rapists calls his friends, they drug Katie and take her away.

Katie wakes to find herself chained up in a basement on a dirty mattress. Ever notice how torture chambers and kidnapper's hideouts are always filthy? They must not have unionized yet. Katie screams but of course no one can hear her. She's raped by another of the bad guys. Eventually she escapes only to realize she's not in NY any longer. A police officer helps her and she finds out she's in Bulgaria. That was some date rape drug! The officer gets an assist from a woman who owns a shelter for battered women. Well, he doesn't realize it but the home is really not to help battered women but to supply them to BE battered. Yes, the house she takes Katie to is the same house she escaped from.

Katie is then raped and tortured some more, this time by a client of the woman who feels the need to use a cattle prod on Katie. I'll leave it up to your imagination how he chooses to do so but can tell you now that your imagination is probably correct. The group of original thugs decide the best thing to do is get rid of Katie so putting their minds together they decide to bury her alive in an equipment case in the cellar. Are you seeing how smart these guys are? I mean first off they don't actually kill her but bury her alive and secondly they do it in their own basement. But they're more stupid than that. It turns out the basement is on top of a series of tunnels beneath the city and the case drops through into one of them and Katie is set free.

From there we go to the moments of these films that fans wait for, the revenge portion. One by one she exacts her revenge on each of the members. One is tied up and sliced with a high degree of infection setting into his wounds. Another is drugged, nearly drowned in a urine filled toilet and then actually drowned in a toilet filled with liquid excrement. The woman is locked in a trunk of her own. And the last guy...well he wakes to find himself strapped to a table with his testicles locked in a vice. I guess this is another of those attempts at equality since we have full frontal male nudity rather than the usual female. A side story has had a priest who helped Katie after her second escape consulting with the earlier seen police officer who truly was unknowing of the part he played in her capture and who is now trying to help her.

So let's talk about the movie some rather than the plotline, which is thin at best. As I said early on this movie isn't about feminist's ideas or about empowering women. It's about exploitation and the worst kind at that. It's about showing a naked woman as the object of male supposed male fantasy. Abused in nearly every way possible this is not a way to show strength in a woman. And when about 70 of the films 106 minutes are her being abused and less than that about her revenge, it becomes clear that the exploitation of a woman is the theme here. Well that and torture of course.

I myself find no enjoyment in watching the torture of another human being for the sake of so called "entertainment". When watching say a terrorist vs. spy film and torture is used to coerce the subject into revealing where a bomb or kidnap victim is that's something else and it usually isn't used to the extent this film and its ilk use it. Those scenes are usually brief rather than taking up most of the screen time. These films are made simply for the freaks of the world who find enjoyment in the debasement of others.

It would be nice if someone made a kidnap movie or horror film that didn't involve how low we can go as a society. It would be nice if these films reached the popularity of the films that involved torture. A new generation has no idea who someone like Karloff or Lugosi were but think they know all about horror films and place ones like this on the top of their list. They completely miss the mark in doing so and it frightens me to think of what future film makers will come up with.

In the meantime after watching this film a thought kept coming back to me. Katie's last male victim. The last man she tortures literally has his testicles being squeezed slowly in a vice. Having sat through all 106 minutes of this film I think between the two of us he got the better end of the deal than I did.

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