I spit on your grave (4 Stars)

This is a review of the 2010 remake of the 1978 film with the same name. The original was the first, and arguably still the greatest "rape and revenge film". The plot is very simple. A female author rents a secluded cabin to finish a book. While there she is raped by four men. After recovering she takes revenge, killing all four men one by one.

The film was one of the most notorious of the "video nasties" in the early years of video. These were films that went direct to video without cinema release to avoid certification. When films were first sold on videotapes the existing laws only required films to be classified for cinema release. A release on video alone meant that the film could theoretically be bought by a person of any age, and more importantly it avoided the danger of the film being banned outright. The laws of most countries soon caught up with the new technology, and the film was banned almost everywhere. In England it was declared a criminal offence to even possess the film, being placed in the same class as films containing child pornography. It was allowed to possess the film in 2001, but an uncensored version of the film wasn't released until September 2011. The film is still banned in Ireland today.

But now let's get back to the remake. I'll concentrate on the differences. Obviously it has better production quality as a newer film, but the gritty atmosphere of the original has been retained. Instead of four men a fifth also rapes her, a policeman. This answers the question that might have been asked after watching the original version, why didn't she report the incident to the police? What I like about the new version is that the rape scene is shorter. Almost half of the original film was taken up by the rape, but in the new film only two of the men are shown raping her, although we are told that all five raped her. The new version spends more time on the revenge. The methods of killing the men are more imaginative. The death scenes are more explicit.

So which version is better? The old or the new? That's a question I can't answer at the moment. I'd need to watch them both back to back, and even then I might not have an answer.

Click here to view the trailer.