Thoughts on I Spit on your Grave (2010)

H

harmonica44

I haven't seen the original but I didn't like the remake. I thought if I'm going to see that kind of violence, I want it to have more depth. The whole revenge segment of the last half, had a real anti-man tone I felt. Not that the movie was trying to be but the lack of depth, brought it out that way, if that makes sense. But the lack of depth made it feel exploitative, and repetitive in the last half, rather than coming up with a story with more plot.

Thoughts?
 
There was no point to it.

Modern exploitation films -- especially remakes -- have an uncanny knack for removing many of the key ingredients that made the originals work. The "Halloween" remake, for one, was totally empty-headed, even though it was directed by Rob Zombie, a big fan of the original. (I don't buy him as a director -- the only thing I've liked of his was the fake trailer he did for "Grindhouse.")

Watch the painfully brilliant original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and compare it with any of the sequels or remakes that followed. Nothing touches its exquisite white trash squalor and complete, terrifying anarchy. You have the feeling that anything could happen at any time during that movie, and the pervasive sense of dread it creates is magical. The ending of the film is a 20-minute chase scene with no dialogue -- only screaming. That movie is pure, uncut Punk Rock.

Hollywood conceives of exploitation films only though their building blocks: let's plug in a torture scene here, a beheading here, cat jumps out of a closet for a fake scare, etc. There seems to be very little attention paid to creating atmosphere, or to an understanding of how suspense it built over time, or how fear and anticipation are created. It's all about the shock shot these days, and frankly, it's bloody (!) boring.

There are modern directors of horror -- usually indies -- who have great feeling for what they're doing, even if they're only operating on a visceral (!) level. If you want to see torture horror done right, see Steve Kastrissios' "The Horseman," an excellent Australian revenge film that totally nails it, because the story is grounded in a dimensional main character with a compelling goal. I also really enjoyed "Wolf Creek" -- another Aussie flick.
 
harmonica44 said:
...the lack of depth made it feel exploitative...
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You expected something more from a remake of an exploitation film?

My main problem with this film was that the whole rape and torture scene was too long (not in the sense that it started to offend me, more that it started to bore me), and then, when Jennifer finally goes for revenge, she sets up all these ridiculous traps, all based around these things they forced her to endure. It becomes comical. It’s a joke, and not a very good one at that.


DirtyPicturesTV said:
...Modern exploitation films -- especially remakes -- have an uncanny knack for removing many of the key ingredients that made the originals work...
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I do agree with this, but your example is flawed. John Carpenters “Halloween” cannot be deemed an exploitation film. If anything, the elements that Zombie added to his version made it more of an exploitation film.

I’d also argue that there have been some good examples of exploitation films being remade. “Dawn Of The Dead” was okay, “Last House on the Left” was alright, “The Hills Have Eyes” was better (in my opinion) than Wes Cravens original.

Just don’t let Platinum Dunes touch anything!
 
mad_hatter said:
I do agree with this, but your example is flawed. John Carpenters “Halloween” cannot be deemed an exploitation film. If anything, the elements that Zombie added to his version made it more of an exploitation film.
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That's silly. It's a classic slasher film, which is a key exploitation genre. You can't convince me that it falls outside of a genre that it wholly embodies.

I’d also argue that there have been some good examples of exploitation films being remade. “Dawn Of The Dead” was okay, “Last House on the Left” was alright, “The Hills Have Eyes” was better (in my opinion) than Wes Cravens original.
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Your level of endorsement for these films is sooooo tepid that it undermines your qualification of them as "good." :lol:

I did like the "Dawn" remake. Been meaning to see the "Hills Have Eyes" update. Hated the new "Last House on the Left" -- another pointless, soulless retake.
 
While I do agree that 'slasher' is by it's nature an exploitation sub-genre, I don't think you can tar them all with the same brush. There's nothing exploitative about 'Halloween', it lacks all of the key ingredients that make up the exploitation films that it itself would give birth to, or that influenced it's creation. No nudity, no gore, not exploitative, just a film that happens to be about people being murdered.

And yes, my glowing endorsements of these films is pretty much based on the fact that "okay" and "alright" is about as good as it gets!
 
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I wouldn't really classify any of the slasher films as "exploitation" films, except the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "Exploitation" is a genre that is very broad, but the key element is that it presents something that you can't get in "Mainstream" films, be it extreme violence, sex, broken taboos (incest, homosexuality, etc...). As a general rule it has also had a tendency to deliver "The sizzle not the steak". Human Centipede is a classic example of an exploitation film. I'd also argue that films like "Shortbus" and "Preaching to the Perverted" are essentially expoitation films.
 
Yeah I wouldn't classify the original Halloween as exploitation, from what I remember the movie had more depth than exploitation strives for. I actually like the Dawn of the Dead remake better, and thought it had more depth, but the original was still good.

And yes I Spit on Your Grave, had ridiculous traps that were just geek shows. I like revenge methods that are believable. Plus I found the movie to be very repettive. first rape, second rape, third rape, first murder, second murder, etc. It's just recycled formula with no story depth.
 
Horror is inherently an exploitation genre, because it's about the violation of taboos. Horror films are exploitation films. They don't require gore or nudity, what they require is the willingness to suggest that social boundaries are being crossed.

Exploitation films are grounded in the desire to make lots of money by spending as little money as possible. Every exploitation film is driven by economics. The way to get butts in seats is sex and violence, which even Hollywood knows. But mainstream studios don't like controversy, so they will only tread ground that has already been broken by indie producers for whom controversy equals sales.

These indie filmmakers also created an aesthetic rooted in their low budgets. Fake blood is incredibly cheap. Herschel Gordon Lewis famously used a cow's tongue to simulate a tongue removal scene in "Blood Feast." Simple, single locations are the standard. Often few characters. It's all about money.

"Halloween" was about getting teenagers into the theater by selling its exploitation elements: an unstoppable serial killer picking people off one by one, with only a hot babe to stop him. Pure, classic exploitation. Through driven by economics, Carpenter elevates the source material. But not to acknowledge this film as exploitation is to ignore the economic realities behind its creation. This movie only differs from a Corman production in the talent of its participants.

Finally, from http://www.videovista.net/articles/johncarpenter.html

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In 1978, Carpenter unleashed Halloween, which would serve as the foundation for a new wave of 'slasher' films, such as Friday The 13th (1980), Prom Night (1980), and A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984). In the August 1979 issue of Chic magazine, Carpenter mused: "Halloween, true crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you. All cheap tricks. But when you come out, you love it. I remember a William Castle film, The House On Haunted Hill, where a skeleton came out of a box next to the screen and it floated on a string out over the audience. Real cheap stuff, but I watched that and thought, 'Wow, isn't that the greatest stuff of all time!' So I thought I'd make a film like that. Fuck everybody. I don't care if this is something I shouldn't be doing. I really like it."

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Your apologies are accepted. :cool:
 
Wow! So JC (John Carpenter, not Jesus Christ) didn’t even know what genre of film he was making! What an idiot!

I understand where you’re coming from, but I’d say that horror is exploitative, not that all horror is exploitation. Horror aims to exploit fear, in the same way that comedy tries to exploit laughter. By that thinking, “Clerks” is exploitation with its low budget and all its poor, poor jokes. How about Universals monster movies? Are they exploitation too? What about the likes of “Blair Witch” and “Paranormal Activity”? They’re micro-budget movies and they’re horror! They must be exploitation, right?

You may well be right. Maybe any film that exploits anything, no matter how minimal, should be classed as exploitation. I don’t think so though. For me, exploitation is a sub-genre of horror (and many other genres), that requires the aesthetics and the sex and the violence and fake blood and the hot babes and the cow’s tongues, none of which ‘Halloween’ had (and no, Jamie Lee Curtis was not a hot babe, even back in those days!).
 
mad_hatter said:
Wow! So JC (John Carpenter, not Jesus Christ) didn’t even know what genre of film he was making! What an idiot!
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Yeah -- screw that guy. What does he know, anyway? :rolleyes:

You may well be right.
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Again, apology accepted. :lol:

Exploitation film pushes subject matter over quality or star casting. So horror films tend to be exploitation films; if you're not pushing boundaries, you aren't horrific, and as standards change, these boundaries gradually widen. Those old Universal films were absolutely trading on their content, albeit in a classier way than what we think of as exploitation. But take a look at some of the pre-code silent movies; Tod Browning, for example, was making exploitation films before the term even existed. I'm sure you've seen "Freaks" -- unquestionably an exploitation movie -- but you should check out some of his ultra-diseased, taboo-breaking flicks like "The Unknown," or "West of Zanzibar."

Though "Clerks" has sex, it wasn't selling itself by using the sex. The marketing campaign immediately tells you whether a film is an exploitation movie. "Blair Witch" was all marketing, and I'm still not sure there's even a movie there. But "Paranormal Activities" -- yes, total exploitation film; it was promoted very much like a William Castle film, and used shots of the audience freaking out in its ads. All it needed was the old Castle gimmick of the life insurance policy against dying from fright, and it would have gone all the way.

There is a bit of a taxonomy problem these days in deciding what fits into this category. Hollywood realized that exploitation films were doing well in the key area of budget vs profit, and that audiences wanted more explicit sex and violence. So the real question for me is not which movies of decades past constituted exploitation films, but which modern studio films do. For example, are Tarantino's big-budget, star-heavy films exploitation films, since he steals everything from cult genre movies? Is the definition of an exploitation movie changing? Or should it be defined as simply whatever the big studios aren't yet ready to touch (i.e. "Human Centipede")? I'm not sure. And look at Lionsgate -- they crank out low-budget horror like it was 1985. But "low" for them means under 10 million.

Personally, I like my exploitation to have some indie street cred behind it. Low-budget grunge makes the sleaze come to life.
 
I hadn't heard that "I Spit On Your Grave" was remade. By a male director. You know, he can be the most feminist liberal guy on the planet and it STILL kinda changes the entire point of the movie. The original is one of my favorite films that I don't want to watch again. It's good, it's meaningful and has some neat revenge scenes, but 45 minutes of rape scene is not exactly a good time. It wasn't meant to be. It was supposed to be horrific and uncomfortable. It was.

I didn't care for the Dawn of the Dead remake all that much (as much as I do like Zach Snyder). I prefer my zombie movies to be horror movies not action movies, but that's a personal preference (and really Dawn wasn't as bad as some of them, but I very much disagree that it had more depth than the original. It didn't; it was just louder and faster).

All that said, as much as I used to be against it, I'm not totally against remakes. Theatre is all about new productions of old material. Think how many thousands of times Hamlet has been remade, or Faust (and both dozens of times on film). Like anything else, there are good and bad, but being first to film a story doesn't mean it won't be done later and better.
 
True "expoitation" as true genre ended in the 1970's as it was largely co-opted by Hollywood. Occasionally a film can pop up, but they are few and far between for the most part as there cease to be real taboos anymore. Also, again the heart of "expoitation" is the carnival aspect, Selling you on the idea of what's inside the tent rather than what's REALLY inside.
 
DirtyPicturesTV said:
Horror is inherently an exploitation genre, because it's about the violation of taboos. Horror films are exploitation films. They don't require gore or nudity, what they require is the willingness to suggest that social boundaries are being crossed.

Exploitation films are grounded in the desire to make lots of money by spending as little money as possible. Every exploitation film is driven by economics. The way to get butts in seats is sex and violence, which even Hollywood knows. But mainstream studios don't like controversy, so they will only tread ground that has already been broken by indie producers for whom controversy equals sales.
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This is very interesting. So you're saying that a lot of hollywood only wants make controversial films if it doesn't go higher than what indie films have already done successfully? This is why I prefer indie a lot, they are willing to be more controversial than Hollywood.

ussinners said:
Remakes SUCK.
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The only remakes I can think of that were better than the original, are Dawn of the Dead, King Kong, and Cape Fear. I guess the Dawn of the Dead remake is more of an action movie, than a horror movie, like one pointed out, but I didn't really find the original to be that scary, and a little more in the campy dark comedy genre, rather than horror.

And I agree that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was well made on the directing level with a real sense of dread, and it is effective, but the script itself felt like pure exploitation and could have dived deeper.

So are there any examples of remakes of exploitation films that have been given depth, or original ones that have any?
 
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harmonica44 said:
The only remakes I can think of that were better than the original... King Kong
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<shoots milk out of nose>

Whaaaat?!

I hated the remake. Peter Jackson's worst movie, and it took a steaming dump on a classic film that's the cinematic equivalent of Rembrandt's "Night Watch."

Dude, don't go dissing the original "King Kong" while I'm around. I will cut you! (Disclaimer: I will not actually cut anybody. My knife is a flimsy plastic prop I got from a gumball machine. I'm a vegetarian, so no ensuing cannibalism, either.)

Look, Willis O'Brien, who built and animated the original Kong, basically invented stop motion by himself. Ray Harryhausen took up his torch, and created genius work that sparked the imaginations of thousands of effects artists. If you talk to anybody who worked on the 3D animation in Jackson's "Kong," they would unhesitatingly offer to kiss the feet of either Harryhausen or O'Brien, and they would crawl through broken glass to do so, because those men are effects gods.

Another thing, the "Kong" remake was unforgivably boring. 40 minutes to get to Devil's Island? Cut to the fricking chase, already. In the original film, the protagonists decide to go to the island, and in the next scene they're already there. That's called storytelling. A bunch of pointless, dead-end intrigue on the boat is what I call "wankeroo" (I just now coined that term specifically for Jackson's remake -- that's how much I hate it.)

By the way, if you ever deign to stoop so low as to watch O'Brien's pioneering stop motion in "The Lost World" (1925), you might notice that a) it has the same plot as the later "King Kong," and b) it has the same plot as the "Jurassic Park" sequel of the same name (in the original, it's a brontosaurus that gets loose in the city instead of a tyrannosaurus).

No more hating on stop motion, or I will weep acid blood onto your Play Station.
 
I got nothing against stop motion, in fact I like it, and that was not my reason for favoring the remake. The original King Kong was very good but mostly as a special effects show. I felt the new one developed the characters a lot more and Ann and Kong had a much deeper chemistry rather than her simply screaming on cue, whenever Kong arrived, and no more depth to the story than that. So I favor it for the added story depth.

Yes a lot of the stuff on the boat could have been cut, but it's like 30 minutes out of 3 hour movie. So we still got about 2.5 hours of good stuff in my opinion.
 
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People actually watched the remake?

Baffling.


JoshL said:
I hadn't heard that "I Spit On Your Grave" was remade. By a male director. You know, he can be the most feminist liberal guy on the planet and it STILL kinda changes the entire point of the movie.
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Um... The original was written and directed by a man. :)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0953392/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Zarchi


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I just recently saw the preview for the first time. Looked like a colossal waste of time to me. Like they re-shot the lamest parts of the SAW movies, but with a stretched out rape scene to start it off. BFD. I'm surprised anyone cared about this one, really. The original has an historical place because of its position in time and the socio-political conditions of the mid-late 70s. No point in remaking it save to create just another weak entry in the torture porn genre.



Can I ask WTF is up with the crap lighting in these torture porn flicks? Seriously. Why am I looking at flat scenes with no ratio in some filthy, forgotten slaughterhouse looking room - except with nice white tile and even lighting everywhere. Seriously.
 
I hear you man. My friend loves this remake and thinks it's one of the best revenge movies ever. But's not near as good of a revenge movie done right, as Oldboy, Hard Candy or Irreversible.
 
harmonica44 said:
I hear you man. My friend loves this remake and thinks it's one of the best revenge movies ever. But's not near as good of a revenge movie done right, as Oldboy, Hard Candy or Irreversible.
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Oldboy is amazing. Love his body of work. Did you see Thirst?

Interesting you mentioned Irreversible, it's on my list of things to watch, along with Noe's recent one Enter the Void. So many films, so little time.
 
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