I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

***

I have never seen the original movie, which is odd seeing as though i'm a huge VHS enthusiast and Video Nasties collector. When I was a kid it was THE movie to see, but the trouble was getting your hands on it as it was so rare. Along with Last House on the Left, The House on the Edge of the Park and all of the other 70's revenge movies, the '78 version of this one was the one that people always talked about but the only one I hadn't seen.

I quite enjoyed the remake of The Last House on the Left but that probably comes from my liking of the original. I also expect a few more of these films to be remade over the next few years as they're a bit of a box office attraction based on the sleezy premise and reputation of the genre.

Jennifer (Sarah Butler) is a writer who has decided to drive deep into the woods to a cabin where she can take a few months to relax and finish her latest novel. She stumbles across some typical deep south Deliverance type guys along the way and even manages to embarrass one accidentally (a move i'm sure which will come back to haunt her later on in the film). After only a few days out in the woods she is attacked in the cabin by the gang of men from the gas station. They proceed to taunt and abuse her before each taking it in turn to rape her and then deciding to leave her for dead. The only catch is that they can't find the body after she jumped into the river. Has she escaped? Will she come back? We shall see...

I don't think i''m spoiling anything there as everyone who knows anything about the original will know the basic plot synopsis of the film. It's pretty well known.

In the opening scenes of the film it was nice to see a brief nod to the '78 film here in the form of the gas pump price. I'm not too sure how close this film is to the original but from the poster I could tell it was almost identical. Some of the rape scenes are quite brutal as to are the torturing scenes but it's not like we haven't seen this kind of thing before, it's nothing new.
This isn't a great film by any stretch of the imagination and the acting is poor at best, but it's also not as bad as some of the other remakes that have been coming out over the past 5 or 6 years. The deaths were good, the lead woman was hot and the British born Andrew Howard who played the Sheriff was fantastic.

It's worth checking out if you have or like me haven't seen the 1978 version.