Thoughts on I Spit on your Grave (2010)

[mad_hatter]

Interesting you mentioned Irreversible, it's on my list of things to watch...

Man, oh man! Best to switch off the moralistic side of your brain. It’s a hard film to watch.


If you want to look at exploitation remakes that are actually better than the originals, I’d suggest only actually bothering with ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, and I only say that cause I thought the original was terrible.

There are some other horror (not exploitation, but I’m sure Dirty will disagree!) remakes that are pretty good; ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Grudge’ spring to mind (but not ‘Dark Water’!).

But for real depth, try ‘The Fly’ and ‘The Thing’. Personally, I don’t class them as remakes, as they’re so far removed from the originals, but I guess they are.

Torture porn is probably the closest thing to “exploitation” we have right now; cheap, nasty, mediocre scripts, mediocre acting, gallons of blood, plenty of tits... I don’t think much effort is put into the lighting…

 

[JoshL]

Um... The original was written and directed by a man.

So it was! I stand corrected! That's what I get for being introduced to the film by a raging feminist, and not doing the research on my own

Anyway, short list of remakes that I liked:

seconding The Fly, The Thing and Cape Fear
fond spot for the remake of the Blob, though I haven't seen it since high school so I'm not sure I'd call it a GOOD remake
Fistfull of Dollars was a good Yojimbo, as The Magnificent Seven was a good Seven Samurai
House on Haunted Hill I actually really love for a roller-coaster style horror/action film
Insomnia was pretty good
The 1990 Night of the Living Dead is the best Romero remake I've seen (up to the end)
Most Dracula/Nosferatu remakes I find something to enjoy in.
I enjoy Funny Games, though I'm not sure it really counts (same director and all).
I liked both versions of Pathfinder, though the American one barely had anything to do with the original and was NOT a good movie...just a fun Conan-esq action film. Insert DVD, turn off mind!

I really thought I would be able to come up with more. Hmmm. As much as I love Peter Jackson, I still haven't seen his King Kong remake. Oh, and who wants to remake The Little Prince (without the god-awful 70s songs)?

 

[David.rhsc]

Man, oh man! Best to switch off the moralistic side of your brain. It’s a hard film to watch.

Yeah, not so much a problem. I have a habit of seeking out things that are "hard to watch," yet can't be classified as gore, or even horror films at all. For me, a film like Gummo, or Happiness, or Requiem for a Dream is a much more interesting/satisfying/provoking "difficult to watch" experience than something with cheap thrills like Hostel.

Really, the only time I get bent about something being a remake these days are cases like Let The Right One In, or Insomnia, or Open Your Eyes. Cases where an absolutely outstanding film gets remade for American audiences only a couple years after the original. Why? Just release the god damn original. Just a pet peeve of mine. I didn't see the American version of Let... - but I did see both versions of the other two, and the foreign originals are superior in every possible way, imnsho.** I guess it just irks me that my fellow countrymen have to have their own special version of movies in order to enjoy them.

Or maybe just the people holding the purse strings are underestimating their audience.

Torture porn is probably the closest thing to “exploitation” we have right now; cheap, nasty, mediocre scripts, mediocre acting, gallons of blood, plenty of tits... I don’t think much effort is put into the lighting…

In fairness, I've seen a handful of scenes in films I'd call torture porn that were pretty well lit, but from what I saw of the preview for I Spit... it just seemed phoned in.

Having said that, I think that torture as a subject matter has it's place right now. I mean there is a good possibility that an "enhanced interrogation" is happening somewhere in the world as I type this sentence.

So it becomes an expression of the times, of sorts. Would be great though if someone could broach the subject without degenerating into the gore-porn aspects.

So it was! I stand corrected! That's what I get for being introduced to the film by a raging feminist, and not doing the research on my own

Would love to see the look on her face when told that the lead actress was the director's wife. Nothing against feminists - I was raised by a bra-burning, raging feminist myself. But raging activists of any kind always amuse me when they are misinformed.




** - Which, by the way, says volumes about the original Insomnia. Seriously. See it. The Nolan version is a good film (though one that I always felt he did as a "Okay, let's do this one for the studio, then I can do what I want" piece), but just not quite up to the original in so many ways.

 

[harmonica44]

People actually watched the remake?

Baffling.




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 don't get why the original was better because of the socio-political conditions of the 70s. I only saw the first half of the original, but thought the remake was exactly the same so far. So what's different about being gang raped today, compared to the 70s?

 

[Gonzo_Entertainment]

"So what's different about being gang raped today, compared to the 70s?"

Graphic rape has been shown on film now, many times, and we all recognize how horrible it is. When the original I Spit on Your GRave came out, a scene like that had either never been done, or had only been done a very few times in movies few people saw. It was shocking and disturbing. In 2011 it's mostly just disturbing. Additionally women had a different place in society then, they were just coming out of a long period where the general opinion on rape was "she must have been asking for it". Now we pretty much all recognize no she wasn't. Then, not so much. It has a totally different social context.

 

[David.rhsc]

Gonzo covers most of the social side of it. Attitudes towards women in 1978 were vastly different than they are now, and the same goes for rape and the pursuit of it as a crime. I'm also fairly certain that this film pre-dates the court precedent that a husband could be found guilty of raping his wife - for example. I could be off on the years though. In fact I could be WAY off on that, but I am certain it pre-dates the period of time in the 80s where there was strong advocacy for rape victims and expansions of the definition of it as a crime.

I was a kid in those days, and the child of a single mother. The late 70s were just the beginning of that being a commonly accepted phenomenon, barely. When we moved (from one state to another), it was like going back in time 10 years and I never heard the end of it. Simply another example that doesn't have much to do with the film as with the social conditions in which it was released.


It's also important to remember that the original film was made a mere 10 years after the death of the Hays Code.

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

Movies weren't nearly that graphic (to the date of the film) with some pretty rare exceptions between '68 and '78. There are folks on the board who probably know vastly more about that era of movies than I do. But if you glance through some of the films listed there as examples of pushing the Code, you can see how draconian it seems by 2011 standards.

The best example of the Code that I can think of is an obscure noir film I saw with Robert Mitchem in some sort of post-WWII medicine racket in London. There's a scene where he is getting lashes in prison. They could either show the whip hitting him OR play the sound of the impact, but not have both the image and sound on screen at the same time.

The result is this bizzare edit where you hear him grunt when you see the whip, and hear the whip when you see the face.

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Some movies that are iconic aren't considered so because of their use of craft. It's their position in time that gives them import. It's sometimes hard to appreciate older movies without taking that into consideration.

 

[Nate North]

Thoughts on the remake of "I spit on your grave"?

I try not to put more thought into a film than the director did, so I have no thoughts about this film. I'd pretty much forgotten it's existence permanently half way through watching it.

And rape exploitation? I'm not sure that was such a fun idea in the first place. I'd like to see some low budget filmmakers exploit "talent" instead.

If you asked how I feel about the movie, I'd say I feel like I should have spent that time watching translated Kurosawa films instead.

 

[harmonica44]

I just saw the original but it's pretty much the same thing. One problem I have with both movies is that they have repetitive plots. She gets raped, again, again, and again. Then she kills again, again, and again. That's the whole movie! It's not enough material to stretch to the length of a feature, and it could have a more twisting and turning, cerebral plot, that doesn't recycle itself or go on autopilot. The 70s one had more of a point to make at the time, but the plot is still poorly structured in my opinion.