The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

At first glance, it seems that this appalling remake has no raison d'être other than Hollywoodian avariciousness. Sporting nearly identical villains, locales and narrative threads, it feels like a glossy reproduction of the original rather than an honest reworking. And while the slick new production values allow for more realistic monstrosity and elaborate new sets, they remain purely cosmetic updates on what is now a truly tired premise. It's only when the viewer lingers on the film's radical new politics of exclusion and chauvinism that the project finally finds meaning. And so the illusion of uselessness vanishes to reveal something much worse: pamphleteering hatred disguised as entertainment.

For me, the very idea of this new Hills Have Eyes meant a double blow to the head, being at once a travesty of Wes Craven's gritty source material and an irresistible bait for beloved director Alexandra Aja. Flown in from France only to unearth and gloss over a dusty old cult item, the man behind the unforgettable Haute Tension had thus become yet another money-making cog in the Hollywoodian sausage machine. It's a real shame too, since his entire creative team (complete with returning collaborators Grégory Levasseur and Baxter) were now hired as thoughtless restorers, repackaging cheap old material for profitable resale, but draining all its life energy in the process.  Here, the crisp photography and princely art direction contribute only to evacuate the original film's glib atmosphere, creating a shimmering spectacle out of what was a raw expression of horror. The same can be said about the slick new "fallout" mutants, unsightly creatures meant to elicit immediate hatred and the convenient signifiers of an historical mistake that needs to be undone. Fitted with a brutal new introduction, but deprived of some crucial later screen time, these monstrous new antagonists are a mere visual aid to help convey the film's apology of war-mongering hatred. Concision is also sacrificed here as this new version runs almost 20 minutes longer to include an intricate new finale that grotesquely hammers home its heinous contentions about the enemies of America. In fact, the entire exaltation of retaliatory violence conveyed by Aja's film comes in stark contrast with Craven's initial condemnation thereof, making the two iterations not twins but complete opposites.

Mutants are people too, y'know...

You should know exactly what to expect from this heap of garbage even before the opening credits start to roll. In their infinite misanthropy, the producers have indeed judged it necessary to tack on a new introduction allowing them to exalt physical determinism in order to ease us into their Manichean outlook on life. If one recalls the introductory shot of Craven's film, he will simply be reminded of silent hills at dusk, the intricacies of which merely hint at the presence of lurking monsters. And while it is crudely filmed, there's a certain subtlety to it, which is found completely lacking in the remake. Here, we are actually shown a white on black title card that reads:

"Between 1945 and 1962 the United States conducted 331 atmospheric nuclear tests. Today, the government still denies the genetic effects caused by the radioactive fallout..."

And as if that ominous warning was not sufficient to let us in on the overdetermined nature of the new "eyes in the hills", the following scene features a bunch of health officials in bio-hazard suits being brutally attacked by a hulking mutant wielding a pickaxe. Puncturing their flesh with the heavy steel pick, the villain then proceeds to lift their carcasses up above his head and smash them against rocks. While this sequence vies to provide the viewer with additional information about the film's antagonists, it actually obscures any attempt at a deeper understanding of their plight, using instead the dubious equation of monstrosity and nefariousness to pin them down as unrepentant antagonists. This point is hammered home with some evocative opening credits featuring archive footage of mushroom clouds and mutated fetuses. And while these images contribute to the film's overarching misanthropy by promoting physical determinism with the help of grating sound effects complementing the parade, their sheer pictorial quality leaves a lasting impression as a true testament to the horrors of nuclear warfare. And since they constitute the only novelty on display before the climactic confrontation, you might actually want to hang on to these images and cherish them.

After the credits, we are immediately thrown back unto the beaten path, with a strikingly similar Carter family halting their cross-country journey in a strikingly similar gas station as Craven's. And although the slick photography now gives a glamorous feel to the surrounding dirt roads and back houses, we feel right at home with what appears to be a returning cast of characters from a popular sitcom. I'm sure you remember the Carter family from before: Bob, Ethel, Lynn, Brenda, Bobby, Doug and their two dogs, Beauty and Beast, celebrating the parents' silver anniversary by going to California (and incidentally passing through the murderous New Mexico hills). The characters' names and their personas haven't changed much since the original film. The only difference is the fact that Lynn has now kept her maiden name after marrying Doug, remaining Lynn Carter instead of becoming Lynn Bukowski. Portrayed by a new cast of jobbers and TV actors (plus Ted Levine, whom I hardly recognized as the magnum-totting macho patriarch), these returning characters soon partake in a strikingly similar ordeal as their precursors. After deciding to take a dirt road through the hills, their trailer is ambushed and they are left stranded in inhospitable surroundings filled with prying mountain dwellers. When these unsightly barbarians brutally attack them, killing three and kidnapping Lynn and Doug's baby, the Carters rise up and decide to impose a similar brand of barbarity on their tormentors. In a nutshell, same family encounters same mutants in the same circumstances, leaving the horror fan biding his time until the final showdown in a decrepit fall-out town full of mutants. As for the slight variations in the story, they fail to alter the narrative progression significantly as they merely promote a sickly new angle from which to view pre-existing material.

Which version are we watching now?

If the present film is enlightening in any regard, it is with the spectacle of its ridiculous production history. Budgeted at 15,000,000$, roughly 60 times the amount it took to produce the original, this rich new remake perfectly exemplifies the shocking policies of Hollywoodian spend-o-crats. I mean, the film was shot in Morocco of all places! Morocco! What? Wasn't there any room left to shoot in New Mexico? Had promoters just bought the last stretch of land from California to Kansas? Perhaps it was that the producers couldn't find the ideal location to encompass their perfect vision of a mutant-led massacre. But then, couldn't they simply alter the screenplay instead of moving the entire film crew across the Atlantic? It's madness! And we're not talking about a naturalistic period piece here; we're talking about a shock-based horror film! I know this request to be futile, but couldn't B-series film be outfitted with B-series budgets? Doesn't that sound like a sound business decision?

I couldn't wrap my head around this at first. I couldn't think of any sound excuse to justify on-location shooting in Morocco. But then the dirty word "monopoly" came to mind, that is the possibility to spend money as absurdly as possible without ever risking to lose ground to your competitors. Such a warped conception of the free market economy is shockingly un-American, but then so is the widespread slavery to glamorous brand names that will keep Hollywood alive despite all of its past and future shortcomings. Personally, I think that promoting low-budget productions would be a fine way for Hollywood to recoup its losses from box office flops, further creating a pool of creative young talent to insure its sustainability. Just like in the good old days. For that to happen however, studio executives would have to relinquish some control over their productions and promote a diversity of styles and techniques, thus compromising the efforts of their marketing experts. But that will never happen. Not only is there no willingness to do so on the part of power-hungry studio heads, but there is no proper motivation either, since Hollywood is now "too big to fail" and remains completely untouched by the possibility of an eventual failure (government handouts being an easy and readily available solution in that event).

In the present case, a smaller crew working with natural settings could've easily done a better job at conveying horror and dread than the inflexible battalion actually at work on the project. And while big budgets and subsequent studio interference are obviously detrimental to the efficiency of any exploitation film, the very notion of "exploitation" tends to erode with the poisonous advent of political correctness. Actually, the staples of exploitation cinema are now being neutered and incorporated directly into the mainstream. This is exemplified by the recent apparition of the "torture porn" sub-genre. Absent from our vocabulary a mere twenty years back, this evocative new expression sums up both the exploitative nature and the viability of this  new trend as a commercial product. With the present film, we are given true insight as to the genre's actual power as object of mass consumption. Fitted with an underlying political message meant to aggressively stimulate the disintegrating patriotic fiber of bleeding-heart "liberals", the film was obviously made to corral as many viewers as possible under the banner of unabashed brutality. Hence it's polished look and vast marketing campaign. After all, everybody needs a glossy war poster for inspiration. Right?

Patriotic stabbings are a sure cure for left-wing apathy:

The Hills Have Eyes as war propaganda. 

Faced with such a soulless rehash, I found that using the war propaganda angle was actually the most satisfying way to give the film purpose and to analyze its dubious iconography. And while some may disagree with such a claim, the film contains ample evidence to support it, the search for which is the only worthy intellectual gymnastics allowed by this sorry exercise in repetition.  Released in March 2006, as support for the war in Iraq was hitting a nearly unprecedented low of 42%, the film uses crude  metaphors and the spectacle of primitive violence to elicit vengeful thoughts against the new enemies of the state, vying to stir up old passions amongst those who need it the most: Democrat pussies. Aside from the fact that the villains here are all mountain-dwelling guerilla fighters, the new screenplay contains a plethora of minute, but revealing updates meant to support a pro-war agenda:

a) The new opening scene. By equating physical difference with wickedness, the film crudely suggests that evil is only skin-deep, a simple matter of genetic differences between individuals. And while this straightforward sequence promotes a certain disdain for anything foreign, it also addresses the more revealing issue of American-made monstrosity. Being the result of military testing during the Cold War, the mutants here are the direct product of anti-Soviet American efforts. Which is exactly the same as Osama bin Laden and his clique, former Mujahideen fighters sponsored by the CIA to combat the Soviets in Afghanistan (as seen in Rambo III, another propaganda film meant to promote American interventionism abroad). And now, the mistakes of the past have come back to haunt us, and they need to be violently undone.

b) The premeditated nature of the Carters' accident. In Craven's film, Bob Carter insists on taking the scenic route through the hills and subsequently loses control of his vehicle during an argument with his wife. In the new version, the Carters are lured away from the main road by a cunning gas attendant, and their car is ambushed by the family of mutants. Thus, the antagonists' actions are now fully premeditated, and not simply circumstantial, leaving absolutely no nuance as to their nefarious intentions. Such a Manichean new outlook on the initial attack subsequently greatly helps warrant the Carters' retaliatory strike.

c) Doug's new left-wing persona. Being described onscreen as a left-wing "pussy" and thoroughly despised by tough patriarch Bob, son-in-law Doug is now characterized as a liberal softie. Mocked for his reverent attitude toward his wife (the man is said to have lost his balls to her) and his lack of proficiency with firearms, Doug has become a grotesque parody of Yankee war protesters. And while  he eventually finds redemption, it is only through primitive violence, "evolving" into the blood-soaked mass murderer of the final scene and "heroic" defender of traditional American values (family and country). This new iconography allows the film to question the actual moral rectitude of left-wing activists by confronting them with the perspective of foreign violence hitting home, their subsequent contention being that any human being would readily take arms to avenge the brutal death of his own family. Previously explored in Death Wish (1974) and other such conservative genre efforts, this intriguing idea is herein meant as a rallying cry for well-thinking, but uninvolved "liberals" who protest the war from a comfortable distance without grasping its more primitive origins.

The left-wing peace activist as "debunked" by
the people at beforeitsnews.com, where godsent
dreams are regarded as facts...

d) The new finale. Set in a nuclear test town from the 1950s, the climactic confrontation between Doug and the antagonistic mutants does not provide mere narrative closure, but a symbolic cleansing of hallowed ground. Featuring dusty old homesteads populated by limbless mannequins arranged in typical family scenes, the makeshift town has become a grotesque parody of Americana under the rule of the mutants, who mock tradition by transforming dinner tables in ghoulish canvas of rotting human flesh, making raunchy sculptures from disarticulated mannequins, filling meat lockers with pickled limbs, even cynically intoning the Star-Spangled Banner. Such shocking defilement is fortunately punished accordingly, with the death sentence happily carried out by shotgun-totting Doug and the Carter family dog, another traditional symbol and defender of American values.

e) The new ending. Contrary to the first, this new ending actually glamorizes the violence perpetrated by the protagonist. Originally comprised of a disturbing fade to red following a shot of Doug's distorted features as he clubs the last villain to death, the final few frames of the film now boast heroic trumpets sounding the return of the battered hero as he emerges from a wall of flames after vanquishing all the desert-dwelling mutants who threatened his family. This radical change in imagery provides the most salient break with the source material, which equated the protagonists' violence with that of the antagonists. Here, the protagonists' violence is validated by the antagonists', making the rationale of retaliatory war completely unproblematic.

f) The American flag. One of the most blatant new symbols in the film is the small American flag mounted on the Carter's truck. Stolen from the vehicle by the mutants and later stuck in the cranium of carbonized patriarch Bob in a grotesque mockery of his values, this flag is thus symbolically defiled by infidels. Luckily, it is later re-appropriated by Doug, and used to puncture the throat of an enemy, thus reclaiming its rightful place as defender of American values.

Restoring the veneer of the American flag is reason enough
to join the warpath. (This image was taken from right-wing
blog Moonbattery.com where you can learn more about
the treacherous nature of the American left-wing).

By using all of its narrative updates to promote the War on Terror, this reprehensible remake actually finds another function than its ability to generate money out of thin air, becoming a temporary war poster, but a lasting example of Hollywood's appropriation of dissident discourse. Yesterday, "exploitation" was a way for radical new voices to showcase the true extent of our freedom of speech, depicting violence not as something glamorous and romantic, but as something raw and primitive. During that era, young filmmakers used exploitation to show that revenge is a coin with two identical sides. Craven's The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes as well as other (rape-) revenge classics such as I Spit on your Grave (1978) made a direct equation of both the protagonists' and antagonists' barbarity, cleverly confronting us with the horror and uselessness of retaliatory violence and challenging our preconceptions about the actual worth of violence. Today, as exploitation is slowly seeping into mainstream culture, its aims are now regulated by the powers that be, causing the disappearance of such cautionary tales and the advent of a purely Manichean paradigm from which the roots of hatred can spring forth unchallenged.

1/5   Nearly identical to the original, the present remake brings nothing new to the table but a disturbing misanthropy. 

Children of the Corn (1984)

This tedious, self-defeating adaptation of Stephen King’s eponymous short story (originally published in the March 1977 issue of Penthouse) probably owes its overreaching cultural influence to a particularly intriguing premise, because it certainly doesn’t stem from anything else within. And while the film’s memorable introduction launches it with a bang, it only does so to better plunge the remaining narrative into utter irrelevance as every interesting issue is systematically underplayed to better suit the narrow needs of a surprisingly uninspired screenplay. With developments as barren as the ghost town they vie to depict and the a main attraction consisting of a tedious game of cat and mouse through corn-filled dirt roads, the viewer is increasingly underwhelmed until he is subjected to the film’s final insult, a supernatural ending that swiftly unbolts all the socio-political implications that could’ve saved the whole thing from oblivion.

The story starts with the premeditated “cleansing” of the Nebraskan town of Gatling by a pack of indoctrinated children who swarm and execute all of their adults counterparts in a bid to please some pagan deity dubbed “He Who Walks Behind the Rows”. In a powerful early scene, coffee mugs are spiked with poison, knives and scythes draw fountains of blood and mutilated corpses fall heavily around young narrator Job as he ducks and cover under the counter of a busy local café on a bright Sunday morning. The carnage is at once repulsive and mesmerizing, and a chilling reminder of the brainwashing effects of organized religion. Unfortunately, the film has no grander purpose for its early cautionary warning, quickly resorting to lowbrow scare tactics in order to drag the narrative all the way toward a highly unsatisfying twist ending.

Gatlin. The absolute dead centre of nowhere.

Cut to three years later as a traveling young couple (Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton in a early starring role) is stuck in the heartland of America, cruising through endless Nebraskan cornfields and jokingly listening to radio evangelists endlessly preaching repentance. Their monotonous trip comes to a grinding halt however, when they run over a dying young man who’s just been knifed after trying to flee from the grasp of underage cult leader Isaac, who is now lord and master of Gatling, which he rules with an iron hand with the help of towering red-headed lackey Malachai. Evidently, the two young protagonists immediately decide to seek police assistance in trying to solve the issue. But after brushing with a particularly unhelpful gas station attendant, they take several mysterious wrong turns through the cornfields and end up smack in the middle of deserted Gatling, where they roam around for the better part of the film, gathering many disturbing clues as to the fate of its inhabitants, but only piecing them together once Malachai has sufficiently closed in to entirely compromise their escape.

After reading the source material, reprinted in Night Shift along with several other influential short stories, I was amazed by the self-defeating nature of the present adaptation, which sacrifices King’s intriguing narrative progression for intangible benefits. And while the initial story structure wasn’t fraught with originality, it made earnest attempts to involve the reader in a deepening mystery by making him partake only in the couple’s experience. Progressively witnessing their accidental collision with a bloodied boy, their timid venture into the heart of Gatling and their subsequent brush with a bevy of feral children, our awe grew constantly with each new revelation, slowly preparing us for the climactic sacrifice scene. But seeing how the film version opens with the brutal revelation of the mystery’s crux, we become immediately uninvolved with the unfolding of the narrative, put instead in the arduous position of waiting for the inevitable outburst of juvenile violence. What’s worse is that the film is structured very much like a mystery, with many stalker shots constantly proving useless as their origin can be ascertained with sharp precision. The reasons for this narrative transgression is never made very explicit, save to say that it allows the casting of two “sympathetic” children meant to soften the blow of teenage bloodlust and to provide some unneeded background information. The decision to have one of the latter children provide the voice-over narration is equally dubious since said narration is not sustained throughout and also proves detrimental to the unfolding of the mystery.

See Linda Hamilton in a early role... and
weep for this "mother of the future".

Further impairing the original story is the nature of the two protagonist’s relationship within the world of the film. Whereas the literary Burt and Vicky were a married couple experiencing a falling-out and trying to patch things up with a trip to California, Horton and Hamilton’s characters are the usual lovebirds of such familiar narratives, with their harmonious understanding providing none of the initial tension present in the short story, while making them predictably impervious to death. Hence the disturbing radio preaching to which they are first subjected now appears nearly comical as they reflect on it with the joyous carelessness of wholesome Yankees. There’s nothing implicitly menacing now, nothing to help create a well-needed form of dread. And while the expected spectacle of teenage brutality may appear disturbing enough, its signifiers are so explicit as to stand out like sore thumbs out of white, undifferentiated narrative plaster. In the end, the only thing on which the story manages to thrive is the young couple’s ineptitude and shocking inability to draw any form of synthetic conclusion from the large amount of proof available to them.

The film’s most disturbing narrative shortcoming however, lies in its stubborn recourse to supernatural horror in order to explain the children’s actions. And while these supernatural elements are an integrant part of the original story, they greatly compromise the film’s potential for relevant socio-political discourse. Being originally meant as a simple shocker, the film could’ve easily updated on King’s work to forward more complex themes, namely by making He Who Walks Behind the Rows an intangible being, and not a simple entity to be thwarted through some dubious narrative gymnastics. In turn, this could’ve allowed us to appraise some of the psychological subtleties inherent to faith and the fearsome power of suggestion held by pulpit pit bulls from the American Midwest. Personally, I was thrilled to see young Isaac first command his troops through a simple nod of his head, wordlessly okaying the massacre of the town’s adults in a chilling display of undue authority. To me, that simple chain of events perfectly exemplified the inner workings of religious extremism, with a charismatic leader imposing his whims on a bevy of mindless followers from a comfortable distance, never actually bloodying his own hands in the process. Unfortunately, once his deity is revealed in a tangible form, the very connotation of faith is irremediably corrupted and the pressing question of choice is brutally stricken from the story, hence taking the human factor out of what should’ve been a truly human tragedy. 

Personally, I think that the power of religion is fearsome precisely because its entire basis is founded on faith alone, with the myriad interpretations of religion texts providing myriads possibilities for sectarian extremities and the charisma of privileged few proving to be a potent weapon against the entire world. But above all, religion can only be understood as a complex relationship of power, making faith not a static form of enslavement, but a willed choice! Any simpler readings are not only ineffective, but nearly misanthropic in their refusal to account for the uncanny power of human will. Other supernatural occurrences further provide the film with shocking narrative shortcuts, such as when Burt and Vicky undertake a loopy trip through the cornfields, moving around in circles until they are forced to reach the town center.

Isaac's removed leadership is strangely similar
to that of Midwestern pulpit pit bulls.

Visually speaking, the film leaves us very little on which to feast, with director Kiersch’s impersonal and inexpressive mise-en-scène, his first feature attempt in the professional arena, merely managing to link one empty scene with the next. And while the opening carnage sequence is absolutely chilling, the rest merely proceeds from the juxtaposition of dusty tableaux featuring a cast of unlikable, underdeveloped characters moving around bland decors filled with dusty corn husk. As for little Sarah’s ominous crayon drawings, which litter the scenery like so many clues brazenly wavered to help us make sense of a transparent mystery, they contribute a certain sense of dread to the ensemble, being at once naïve and fearsome depictions of the atrocities perpetrated by Isaac’s followers, sort of an illuminated storybook for the unenlightened. Most other prominent elements of set design, including the ghastly interiors of the church and that clever corncob crucifix, are only cheap variations on King’s original design.

Further defusing the film is a bevy of abrasive characters portrayed by an uneven cast of newcomers. Flanked with an ineffectual husband figure, a far cry from the resourceful and moody ex-soldier originally envisioned by King, Linda Hamilton’s onscreen persona lacks the uplifting assertiveness that she is well known for since her role in the Terminator films (1984, 1991), proving to be no more than the expected damsel in distress and bargaining chip for the infuriated children in their attempts to corral Burt for sacrifice. As for sympathetic children Job and Sarah, they appear as little more than obligatory add-ons, forming an unnecessary bridge between the murderous youths roaming the fields and the two vapid protagonists. With the shrill voice and diminutive stature of main antagonist Isaac preventing him from conveying any sort of actual menace, even with the disturbing efficiency of his nonsensical preaching, red-headed sidekick Malachai proves to be the only memorable character left in the roster. Being the only youth to openly challenge Isaac’s authority, he is also one of the most interesting and complex characters out there, one who capitalizes on his manly stature and ruthless handling of blades to create a distinct, and absolutely crucial sense of terror to the story.

The film's set design is a far cry from King's original
vision, with lots of corn husk thrown in for looks.

Children of the Corn is a newcomer’s film and this should account for most of its shortcomings. Working with a cast of inexperienced youths, the unseasoned production team (including director Kiersch and screenwriter George Goldsmith) unfortunately couldn’t refrain from making costly narrative and dramatic mistakes that irremediably sabotaged a project with definite potential. And while the film was a surprise hit, generating box office revenues equal to more than 15 times its original budget while spawning a whopping seven sequels, this is hardly ground for you to take a peek and risk losing your eyes to protruding corn husk. For anyone who is manically drawn to the film’s premise, I suggest you read King’s story or watch South Park episode The Wacky Molestation Adventure instead, the latter of which provides a well-needed moral lesson absent from the present film.

1/5   Watching this irremediably flawed Stephen King adaptation is far less exciting than walking through cornfields for an hour and a half. 

H6: Diary of a Serial Killer (2005)

This surprisingly tame Spanish import doesn’t look as bad as it is boring. Relying on a screenplay that fancies itself an enlightening foray into the mind of a madman, the film is actually overbearing and snob, with no suspense to grip us and no real insight as to the actual mindset of the protagonist. Add to that some atrocious editing and you’ve got a would-be Henry that falls flat on its face, dragging the viewer not in a actual depths of the human psyche, but up in the arms of Orpheus.

Antonio Frau: rarely has a chainsaw-totting, self-rigtheous

mass-murderer been so uninteresting.

Our story opens on a jealous young man strangling his girlfriend to death following what seems to be a recurring argument. This young man turns out to be the titular anti-hero. Years later, after being released from prison, he moves in a large guesthouse inherited from his aunt. That’s where he puts his long-matured plan into execution: to chronicle his exploits as a serial rapist and killer of streetwalkers. Convinced that he has some sort of divine authority over the prostitutes living in the surrounding neighborhood, he proceeds to equip one of the guest rooms with plastic-covered walls and a large table with four leather straps. That’s where he brings his unwilling guests to indulge in their suffering and to preach endlessly, all the while living a double life alongside his newly married wife and keeping a diary of his activities for posterity. At some point, a police detective gets involved in all this, adding yet another voice-over to the over-saturated soundtrack. As for the would-be clever denouement, it could’ve worked if only we had been given reasons to care for what is ultimately a despicable, highly uninteresting protagonist.

I rented H6 mostly out of curiosity, wishing for a traumatizing torture porn title to darken my nights. I was particularly intrigued by the 18+ rating showcased on the box. That turned out to be a dud. The gore here is actually very light, consisting of little more than suggested dismemberment, splashing blood and dispersed body parts. There is some cannibalism involved, but it merely stands as one of the many random quirks of the protagonist. There is some sex also, but nothing really decadent, especially since our murderous friend doesn’t feel the need to remove his victims’ panties before raping them. He merely squirms over them, like a slug. There is no real passion to it. Nothing palpable at any rate. The guy is actually much more expressive when reading from his diary than in any of the torture sessions in the film. So if you get more of a kick out of watching some guy tend to his diary rather than watching him kill people, then H6 is the film for you, especially since there are also some neat “page-turning” wipes to go along with the central “diary” idea. As far as novelty is concerned, these wipes could actually prove to be the most exciting technical feat here, which should tell you about the level of this thing...

The killer sluggishly squirms over his victims

while preaching abstinence...

As the drama began to unfold, I was pleased to discover the central setting through a series of asymmetric shots, each taken from an unusual angle, and each featuring telling details about the guesthouse. Hence, we are shown a single wooden leg gathering dust, a luxuriant spiral staircase and some dilapidated rooms covered with incongruous art. The fragmentation of space immediately creates a labyrinthine space in which the story can take root. It also mirrors the psychological instability of the killer, which we infer from the opening sequence. It’s all well and good up to this point, but the film then quickly unravels and crumbles under the weight of its poor penmanship and some ill-advised directorial decisions.

You see, the fragmentation of space used to unveil the intriguing central setting turns out to be ever-present, even in the most banal dialogue scenes. Hence, the camera angle changes every few seconds, even when totally unwarranted by the scene. This is not only annoying from a visual standpoint, but it is also detrimental to any coherent sense of space or any atmospheric concern. Since the camera never lingers on anything, nothing seems to ever have sensual interest. Nothing is ever scrutinized, nor does any of the victims succumb to the lingering power of the camera's gaze, one of the most powerful weapons in the horror film arsenal. What this eventually points out to is a lack of directorial assertiveness in depicting space or pacing the action. The dubious decision to have torture scenes intercut with diary-writing scenes or boring domestic scenes also undermines any true sense of horror that could ever have come out of the narrative. No intensity is to be found with these constant cuts. All that is left is a bland exposé of the killer’s actions in the perspective of creating an engrossing narrative from what is actually a detestable protagonist and his dubious pastimes. 

Great, but unrealized potential for the labyrinthine

interiors of Frau's squalid guesthouse.

Now, I’ve said that the fragmentation of space helped define the psychological instability of the protagonist. Unfortunately, that psychological instability also turned out to be a dud. Actually, the morbidly passionate character we met in the opening sequence is nothing like the assertive and controlled character we meet on the other side of his prison sentence. Depicted as a mastermind of macabre pursuits, this “new” Antonio is supposed to come off as a likeable, almost Tarantino-esque bad guy with a master plan to leave us in awe. He is NOT the unstable madman that the mise-en-scène first suggests. But while his endless preaching and philosophizing is meant to imbue his character with a sense of purpose, it actually has the contrary effect. The weak, unconvincing arguments he uses to justify his actions are actually delivered by the killer as pearls of wisdom, at once too articulate to suggest madness and too ridiculous to suggest sanity. This creates a disturbing discrepancy between the character's endless resolve and what is essentially a near-total lack of sound motivation, pointing out to nothing more than a badly conceived piece of filmmaking, one that has pretension in spades, but no means to bring them to fruition in any sort of coherent narrative. 

From a screenwriting standpoint alone, the film is quite weak, defusing almost all of its attempts at foreshadowing and thus creating a chaotic narrative full of red herrings. As I mentioned earlier, the very opening sequence is misleading in its depiction of an impulsive wife-beater, which is then painstakingly established as a calm, composed murderer. Then, there is the issue with his wife’s infidelity, which seems to prefigure an explosive denouement, or at least a heated confrontation that never happens. As for the fact that the protagonist constantly contradicts himself, praising abstinence for example, then raping a bound victim scant moments later, it wouldn’t be so bad if he wasn’t ultimately portrayed as a calculating and self-controlled mastermind, which itself contradicts the way he was set up in an endless loop of awful characterization. Other important plot points are only briefly mentioned, such as the study of Law undertook by the killer during his stay in prison, the fact that the detective on the dead prostitutes’ case is actually the same detective who put him in jail. The very nature of the protagonist’s mental state is never convincingly laid out, nor is it ever manifested in any intriguing way. All of this makes him a very unlikable lead, and as the sole fleshed-out character in the story, a very weak link to hold the screenplay together.

White clothes are not nearly enough to exonerate
the serial rapist of 18 women...

With a very intrusive score featuring loads of classical pieces tacked on to better imbue this exploitation film with a false sense of nobility, the entire enterprise seems discordant and unfinished. Add to that some highly unwelcome voice-over narration from three, count them, three different sources (the killer, his wife and the police detective) and you’ve got a confused narrative that never manages to generate interest despite some serious delusions of grandeur. This could have been saved with some suspense, a basic sense of pacing, or any sort of powerful imagery, gory or otherwise, but all of these are also found lacking. The end result is a tedious yawner with no redeeming value but great settings and some decent photography, both of which are lost on an atrocious and pretentious screenplay featuring one of the most unlikable anti-heroes since Freddy Krueger started talking only in one-liners.

1/5   Some decent photography and luxuriant settings can’t save a pretentious, flawed and tedious screenplay filmed with no sense of pacing and no knack for tension-building. 

Horny House of Horror (2010)

This unimaginative, technically inept horror film created for the Japanese home entertainment market fails to transcend the overcrowded sub-genre from which it hails. Fans of Japanese cinema shouldn't be surprised by the eminent lack of production values here and by how straightforward and predictable the narrative turns out to be. Casual horror fans might either be aroused or put off by the copious amounts of sexual themes and genital violence, but this comes only as very mild recommendation for undiscriminating gorehounds. Most people will want to steer clear of this one.

Bland salarymen as protagonists, baseball outfits,
gross-out humor, nudity aplenty and geysers of blood
with nobody at the helm: here's another typical entry
in Japanese gore cinema

When three everymen decide to celebrate their last days together (the protagonist being engaged to a domineering woman who disapproves of his friends and their unabashed love for baseball), they stumble upon the titular massage parlor and are quickly drawn in by its suspiciously low prices. Obviously, these are only meant to veil the actual function of the bordello, which is to mutilate horny men during the act of sex for the entertainment of some perverts watching the whole thing live. But the naive protagonists pay no mind, and are quickly drawn into a nightmarish world of deadly sex toys and ugly decors. Likewise, the viewer is caught in a series of increasingly ugly sets, increasingly annoying antagonists (most of which is Akemi's foul-mouthed lead whore), and increasingly unfunny antics meant to amuse only the most undiscriminating of toilet humor fans, with plausibility being a mere afterthought on the whole. Granted that the vast majority of men value their penises much more than I do, I still doubt that they'd risk death in order to reclaim their severed organ in hopes of reattachment. Seeing how this is the kind of pressing matter that the film addresses as some of its most dramatic issues, you should easily be informed as to the level of this effort.

That said, the film features an incredible amount of penile trauma and blood showers, with lots of gratuitous female nudity to entice viewers while they are repulsed by the lingering promise of castration. The focus here is put squarely on gore, rubber prosthetics and juvenile humor instead of any coherent attempt at creating an affective or engrossing narrative. While this should be just enough to delight fans of the genre, it won't be anyone else's cup of tea. Just picture this for a spell: a close-up of a girl's butt shot at an angle so as to barely hide her vagina from which a shower of blood violently spurts, followed by the severed penis inside her, all of this punctuated by the ungodly screams of the male victim. If you really, really want to see such stuff, despite the incredibly crappy technical framework of the film, then go right ahead: enjoy! By the way, it will be hard for one to interpret such an attack as feminist backlash against the patriarchal Japanese society since the female perpetrators are but slave agents working for a male crime boss. Obviously, if you can manage to identify with the dumb protagonists, then you might find yourself somewhat troubled by their ordeal, in which case you might actually find an angle from which to successfully enjoy the film. Otherwise, I'm sure you wouldn't even consider buying a ticket for such a title. And nor should you.

"Get a hard-on and I cut your dick": if you can appreciate
the deeper implications of such a prank, then please
rent the film...

Of course, the film also score some points for its unabashed showcase of nudity (male and female alike). For those who like her, I must mention the presence of porn starlet Asami in a typically raucous role, that of a veteran cock muncher equipped with a set of metallic vagina dentatae. Personally, I have a hard time enjoying her tomboy antics and her deep, raspy voice and I was much more attracted to the more dramatic, more sympathetic, but eventually more traditional character played by gorgeous Saori Hara, another porn actress. The luckless whore entangled in a world of intimidation and blackmail will certainly sound more appealing to most film-goers, but in the end, the joyous, mass-murdering cock-slasher would have a better dramatic potential, had her character been properly handled. At any rate, characterization is not the film's strong suit, nor is story structure, direction, production or any important technical area, the sole effective department being that of special effects, which manages to produce all of the functional elements of the film, namely the latex prosthetics and onscreen blood meant to gross out the audience.

Saori Hara (born Mai Kato) is a sight to behold. Unfortunately,
the same can't be said about the film's sets, cinematography,
graphic humor, art direction, acting, editing...

Personally, I bought a ticket for Horny House of Horror just to fill some time. And I soon found out that this was the film's main function too: fill some time. But seeing how I could've been doing anything else than watching this stuff, I also realized that time can be spent instead of filled, spent in order to reap future benefits and not just immediate thrills. That said, I quite enjoyed the opening cartoon depicting the function of Japanese whorehouses within society: instructive and lighthearted despite the adult material at hand. I should've left right after...


1/5 This cheap effort in button-pushing is recommended only for die-hard Japanese horror fans and undiscriminating gorehounds.

Red State (2011)

I wonder what the cynical adulescents of Kevin Smith's early films would have to say about Red State... Just imagine this new outing as The Phantom Menace seen through the eyes of bitchy, over-analytical Randall from Clerks. What would you think he'd say? Would he rip it to shreds? Probably. Would he point out how uncaring the work is in regards to fans? No doubt. Would he ever stop talking about how bad it is? No. And although I am reluctant to praise Randall in any way (except for his hilarious depiction of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and his closing rant against Dante at the end of Clerks), I must say that I felt exactly like him while watching Red State. I felt like an abused fanboy ready to latch out violently against what I considered to be a cruel trick by Smith. However, it also got me thinking of a practical way to remove the horrible shit stain left on the screen by the director. Another film, a sequel, about the reactions of nerdy fans to his abysmal new film. Then maybe he could redeem himself, seeing how he can only make relevant films when they're entirely located within the confines of malls, convenience stores, studios and other such places where slackers congregate to talk shit about this or that dreadful cultural product.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

Three high school slackers decide to go out one night and leave their boring suburban town in search of pussy. After selecting a nameless pair of tits from a singles website and making sure that its proprietor is willing to fuck them all at once, they hit the road in daddy's car and head for a distant trailer isolated by the dark, rural surroundings. Unfortunately for them, something unholy and ill-intentioned is also lurking in the shadows, ready to jump out and claim their soul. Demented preacher Abin Cooper, a composite archetype inspired by Fred Phelps and David Koresh, has actually lured the young men into the trailer in order to capture them and make them pay for their sins. Intended to die in a ritualistic execution, one of the guys escapes, but it doesn't matter, for his story becomes secondary as soon as the cynical fed played by John Goodman appears onscreen. The remainder of the film sees Cooper and his fanatical followers pitted against Goodman's agents in an endless, uninvolving gunfight, which drags the narrative slavishly to the end, where a succession of jokes finish defusing the mood set up in the first twenty minutes.

While eagerly anticipated by flocks and flocks of fans, Kevin Smith's new film, a confused hodgepodge of torture-porn-cum-action comedy, plays strictly for cheap laughs and dry, witless cynicism directed at the most obvious of targets, the Southern red states. In the literal sense, a red state is simply a Republican state. Hence, the film title alone should tell you just how unfocused Smith's attack on conservatives is. Gun-toting, gay-bashing, religious fanatics abound. Sometimes ridiculed to the point of silliness, sometimes gravely depicted, they never come off as characters. They're mere archetypes crafted to push on the viewer's buttons instead of being cogs in a real narrative. Such indeterminacy plagues the entire film, starting with the early promise of torture porn, which quickly evaporates to set the stage for a never-ending action sequence that would feel more at home in a Michael bay film. Torpedoed by Smith's unsure foot at the helm, and in the editing room, this film is a highly unwelcome departure from the character-driven, slacker-realist comedies that have made fat, bearded Smith a staple of the American indie scene. It is an ill-advised attempt at generating cynicism outside of his comfort zone and away from the involving and everyday look of his better outings. New rarely means better, and it is certainly not the case here.

Don't be fooled by the gag; this ain't a horror film.

I will not fiddle with the puck here, as Smith did while shooting his film. Red State is an exercise in futility, a tedious, never-ending series of uninspired, flavorless vignettes trying to pass off as a legitimate, high-minded critique of religious extremism. And while the main antagonist manages to give an occasional jolt of electricity to this lifeless outing, he cannot balance the shit-filled scale that is the narrative. Red State is probably one of the worst Fantasia films I have seen in years, and certainly the worst Kevin Smith film out there. While the famed anecdotalist struggles to create a coherent storyline out of the many big ideas and genre inclinations contained in the film, he also struggles in the editing room, where he multiplies the abrupt cuts and awkward alternations of contrasting moods contributing to the atrocious pacing of the ensemble. Cutting back and forth between genuine moments of dramatic tension, mean-spirited snippets of over-the-top violence and absurd comedy bits, the film ultimately amounts to a confused and highly dubious mish-mash of ideas thrown in a mixer, which is then flicked on with crossed fingers. It's like throwing the entire contents of your vegetable crisper in a blender, pushing the button and hoping for the best. In this case, Smith hadn't realized that there were lots of rotting onions and rancid kelp in the mix, which is probably what caused the debilitating sickness of his narrative.

Michael Parks does what he can to try and
bring a silly caricature to life

Aiming to please both his own fan-base and the horror film crowd, Smith manages to please neither. Because while he sets up an horror film early on, he never follows up on this, nor does he manage to craft the kind of likeable slackers and engrossing, over-the-top situations which he is famous for. Drawing energy from the torture porn premise he apparently vows to update, Smith offers horror fans a tantalizing perspective, which he never capitalizes upon. Instead, he abruptly branches into Greengrass-esque territory, leaving his three leads in the dust and starting anew, with a new protagonist and a new, lighter mood at the halfway mark of the film. The ultra-lengthy, but strangely involving monologue meant to establish Cooper as a delusional, but charismatic monster is thus defused and so are all the efforts made to establish mood up to that point. After that, the film never recovers, deconstructing and rebuilding itself endlessly much to the dismay of the viewer. Throw in some useless, incongruous peripheral characters such as the gay sheriff portrayed with unease by Stephen Root and you've got a narrative far too dense for its own good. Had I trusted my instincts, I would've walked out when the boat started drifting away toward the maelstrom of irrelevance. But I stayed instead... which isn't bad, considering the extra ammo I was given to whine about the film, and thus, to stay true to Kevin Smith, whom I still love.

1/5 Throw a whole bunch of narrative influences, bland caricatures and one hell of a vain, overlong gunfight together without any discrimination and you get something like this: an empty, uninspired farce that will forever scar Smith's filmography.

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

aka I Know What You Did Last Month

This unnecessary remake of the 1978 exploitation classic tanked big time at the American box-office. Grossing just under 95,000$, this multi-million dollars venture is the umpteenth proof that Hollywood should devise a two-tier system of production in order to recoup its losses from blockbuster bombs. Given the instant availability and low cost of digital medias, this is the route they should be taking. Then, instead of having sharply photographed, eminently theatrical and ultimately uninvolving exploitation films, we'd have true visions of horror. That said, while it fails to capture the gritty realism of classic exploitation cinema, this film boasts a form of misogyny that was long forgotten, thus creating one of the most appalling examples of phallocentrism in the annals of cinema.

Topical interest

First things first; I must confess that I haven't seen the source material for this film, neither out of disgust, nor ethics. I haven't seen it for reasons purely circumstantial. Therefore, the current review will not be comparison-based and this will probably enhance its relevance. What drew me toward this film is curiosity. Curiosity and topicality. I will come back to this later, but I wished that this film could metaphorically avenge Lara Logan, the CBS correspondent whose brutal rape during the recent Egyptian uprising stirred controversy and revealed the twisted beliefs beheld by many conservative commentators.

As you probably know, I Spit on Your Grave is a rape/revenge film in the tradition of The Last House on the Left. Only here, the victim avenges herself, turning the table on her aggressors and submitting them to tortures worse that what she has personally endured. Obviously, this last assertion is debatable, but the fact remains that it is the ethics of revenge which are appraised here, as in all revenge films. This is precisely where their interest lie, in opening up a debate between the fans of these films and their detractors while making spectator identification wholly problematic. Should we condone the vindictive violence onscreen as a form of justice, or as some critics have suggested, a sign of female empowerment? And what about the rape scene: harmless male fantasy or revelatory snippet of true-to-life violence? These questions are essential to any appreciation of the film, but the fun of analysis also pertains to hypothetical speculation.

The rednecks are overdetermined rapists. And sexy women are overdetermined victims. Just for the fun of argument, let us imagine Arab rapists. Obviously, this would shock quite a few people, but what would it do for the spectators, or commentators of such films? Then, let us imagine a man being raped by rednecks... Oh! Somebody already beat us to the punch: James Dickey, the guy behind Deliverance. Now, I'm certain that the mere mention of this title instantaneously brings back the painful memory of Ned Beatty's victimization in any male who has seen the film. This should draw many more questions, paramount of which is why there aren't more examples of sexual violence directed at men, considering its effectiveness amongst genre film fans. I'm betting that most male moviegoers remember the rape of old Ned much more vividly than that of any screen female, including Italian goddess Monica Bellucci, whose abominable rape in Irreversible was excruciatingly lengthy. I'm betting that many of these guys have playfully replayed the squealing bit in one form or another during their life. As for the rapes of women, they're a common occurrence, both onscreen and off, which has tended to lessen their impact in the minds of men. Now, you'd think that a film like I Spit on Your Grave could actually thwart these trends, but that's where you're wrong. Made by men, for men, relegating women to the depths of infamy, it is merely an example of self-centred scrotum-petting.

Men are pigs

One Thousand and One Phalluses

Jennifer Hills is writing her second book and she needs isolation in order to do it. On her way toward a forest cabin in Hicksville, USA, she meets a threesome of foul-looking gas station attendants, the "pack leader" of which dishes out lame attempts at seducing her, convinced that his rugged good looks will magically illuminate the road to her panties. When Jennifer mocks him, it's clear that his fragile male ego has been hurt, as well as the tenuous authority he seems to hold on his buddies. When he stumbles in front of her, slipping on an oil spill and falling flat on the wet cement like a goofball, the insult is just too great for him. Although, he lets Jennifer leave, you know that he has silently pledged to regain his status amongst his boys by using her weak body as a way to assert his dominance.

A few scenes pass by in which we see Jennifer parading in various skimpy outfits, including a surprisingly revealing jogging attire that attracts attention to itself mainly because of the narrative incongruity it suggests. Since she is shown as a boozing pot-smoker, it's hard to believe how Jennifer could also be a dedicated jogger. There is no absolute contradiction here, but the jogging bit is clearly out of character. The raison d'être of this scene is merely to show Jennifer's body and so is that of the underwear scene in which she undresses completely in order to remove a wine stain on her pants. While scrubbing over the sink, she is unknowingly filmed through the window by a mysterious pervert whose appreciation of Sarah Butler's lanky body is meant to echo our own. From where I stood, both these scenes appeared excessive in their showcasing of Jennifer's skin, as if they were meant to accuse her of titillation, hence half-justifying things to come.

After a while, during which we have learned next to nothing about the "protagonist" except a certain inclination toward nakedness, there's a plumbing failure at the cabin and she needs the help of a plumber. A slow-witted local comes to her rescue and is awarded a kiss for a job well done. Being somewhat of a complexed virgin, the young man is embarrassed and flees the scene, only to go and brag about the kiss to the three gas station attendants from before. As a friend pointed out, the fat one with the camera is actually Damian from Mean Girls. You know, the sarcastic gay guy who loves pink... Well now, he's got a bandana, some leathers and a rad attitude. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't picture him as anybody other than Damian, which made me shout at the screen a couple of times (things like: "What's happened to you, Damian?" and "Nooo, Damian, noooo!!"). Identity confusion aside, he portrays the voyeur of the group, the pervert who rapes not with his cock but with his camera. In this scene, he shows head rapist Johnny the clip taken earlier through the window of the cabin. Combined with the jealousy derived from dim-witted Matthew's confession and the frustration from his first encounter with Jennifer, Johnny becomes overwhelmed by his urge to rape. And so he packs his guns and invites his buds to share an evening at Jennifer's cabin, thus reclaiming his leader status.

Johnny has got one great, big hard-on for Jennifer

There begins the night of one thousand and one phalluses, during which guns and cocks alike swarm around Jennifer and into her mouth, vagina and ass. Of course, there's no hardcore material, but the scene still seems interminable. At first, the guys push guns down her throat, "preparing" her for the following onslaught of cocks. In a disturbing display of broken masculinity, they rely on deadly metal phalluses to assert their dominance. Then, they do so through the humiliation of dim-witted Matthew. Using his shy appreciation of Jennifer as a springboard, they force him to express his love physically, like a man. They first laugh at his impotence, but then, they are quick to encourage him to go "deeper" and "deeper" once he musters enough testosterone to start humping her like a wild animal. All the while, the camera lingers on the atrocities, making it a point to capture the overzealousness of the nonchalant yokels in matters of rape.

At some point, Jennifer manages to escape, only to fall into the clutches of an accomplice, the local sheriff, who brings her back to the cabin where she is gang-raped some more. After the deed, which involves anal and oral penetration, she manages to stand up and walk down a muddy path on very shaky legs. Just before the sheriff gets a chance to shoot her, she does an angel leap into a river and vanishes from the narrative until the time of reckoning arrives. Later in the film, Jennifer confesses to have survived off bugs and stuff while in the woods, recovering from the incident and plotting her revenge. And although this is the most horrific part of her tale, it is not shown onscreen. Instead, we are treated to the sight of the boys enjoying the great outdoors by drinking beer on discarded car seats. Then, in accordance with the most dated of slasher film clichés, they start being stalked by an unseen assailant who draws them outside their houses by making thudding noises, leaving dead animals on their porch, and such and such. Eventually, the five men are all sequestrated and killed, each in obligatory poetic fashion that often borders on the comical. Frankly, the specters of both Jason Voorhees and the Jigsaw Killer loom about this forced, unoriginal and unsatisfying conclusion.

Testicular synapses

I'm sure that the majority of people will agree to say that most genre films are male-centric. Although you rarely see a live one, these films are all about cock and cock-titillation, and this film here is the perfect example. Not only does it focus heavily on the motivations and apprehensions of the rapists, but it manages to transform the rape victim into a ghoulish, soulless slasher. Given its prevalent phallocentric philosophy, the title contains a blatantly misleading incongruity. It is the "I", which seems to suggest that the female victim is also the protagonist and thus inherits decent screentime and characterization. But as things stand, the titular pronoun is used in the exact same way as that in I Know What You Did Last Summer. It is the denomination of a monstrous observer and savage judge of morality ready to slash you from behind a bush (no pun intended). By depicting Jennifer as such, the film likens her tormentors to the gorgeous teenagers from Jim Gillespie's film, basically good folks involved in a moral dilemma solved by an outside entity holding the supreme truth of the universe.

Much to my surprise, the film focuses almost solely on the rapists, limiting Sarah Butler's output to that of a slasher villain, tormented at first, then transformed into a wisecracking avenger. Contrary to the male rapists, whose characters are distinctive and developed, Butler's Jennifer is a generic victim. All we know about her can be resumed to clichés. She is a big-city writer, of what, we don't know. De facto, she is depicted as a drunk who needs the quietude of the country for inspiration. That's all we learn about her. Her remaining contribution to the film involves stripping butt-naked, screaming gloomily, being force-fed various forms of phalluses, and taking revenge. Never is her psychological ordeal fore-fronted, whereas that of the rapists is devoted an entire hour of screentime.

For some reason, the makers of this film thought it would be neat to show the aftermath of the rape entirely from the rapists' point of view, keeping Jennifer as a plot device for later use. Hence we see dim-witted redneck Matthew crying away in a desperate, and infuriating effort to rally us behind his plight. We see the poor sheriff being traumatized by a videocassette left by Jennifer in his family house. All this generic thriller fodder does is to flesh out the "antagonists", humanizing them much, much more than Jennifer. This greatly widens the discrepancy between the very "human" rapists and the highly objectified victim, whose entire persona is limited to her body, and most specifically, her genitalia. In the end, the film builds up toward an underwhelming finale that showcases all the screen-writers' creativity embodied in the torture implements utilized by Jennifer to exact revenge. Wishing to follow in the footsteps of Saw, minus the sickening editing, director Monroe locates the crux of horror not in the theatrical rape scene, but in these fakely imaginative contraptions. This is quite fitting if you consider how the rapists are fleshed out to maximize the effect of their demise and how Jennifer functions in the exact same way as the Jigsaw Killer. Just like sick old John Kramer from the undying torture porn franchise, her ordeal is useful only insofar as it encourages her to teach her victims a moral lesson. Just like Jigsaw's sickness, her rape is incidental. It is used not to characterize the protagonist, but to give a dubious moral dimension to her killings, as exemplified by their "poetic" nature (the voyeur has his eyes eaten out, the anal rapist is anally raped...).

To all you rapists out there: never forget to kill your victim!

Otherwise, you could go to Court or have your nutsack removed

The film self-destructs because the fantasy of female empowerment is likened to that of sexually-repressed slashers à la Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. Rape itself is shown as something horrible, but one that is no different from other crimes, one that entails no horror but potential revenge on the perpetrators. What the film basically tells you is this: after you rape a girl and she starts wandering away from you, don't just stand there and laugh, shoot her in the back before she reaches the river. That way, you can bury her body in the forest and be forever blameless. That way, you can save your balls and cock, go back to your family and enjoy a normal life. This is made explicit by the fact that Jennifer is depicted as a looming specter whose function is retribution. Her body is not the vector of a painful post- rape aftermath, but a mere sperm dumpster bestowed with castrating hands. That's all there is to the "female-empowerment fantasy" suggested by New York Times columnist Jeannette Catsoulis. And for those who say that the perpetrators get their rightful punishment through the liberated hands of a liberated female, well they don't. Their ordeal involves no humiliation, nor does it put the burden of shame on their shoulders. It is important to note that Jennifer does not observe as her victims are executed, leaving them an ill-deserved quietude prior to death. Hence, she fails to capture the power of the gaze, which remains in the male realm. Most of all, she fails to really humiliate her victims, whose deaths are almost heroic. Protesting loudly, and in great contrast to her own meek opposition earlier in the film, the men go out with a bang whereas we would have wanted them to whimper and cry and break into shapeless, battered balls of shame. In that light, castration is only a half-effective symbol of justice, which fails to truly break down the macho self-assurance of the rapists. What's even more shocking in these scenes is how Jennifer tortures her oppressors using their own words. By replaying the previous rape scene with a simple reversal of roles, she fails to become her own person. She is merely the reversed mirror of male aggression. She uses the weapons of men, the words of men, but without gaining their power to look. She is supposed to be a successful writer, and despite that fact, she has no confidence with words and must rely on the words of men to express herself. Hence, she is never liberated from the shackles of patriarchy. Victim in the beginning, she is also victim at the end, in a vicious circle which the film willfully keeps unbroken.

Women are from Mars, men are from Venus

Strangely, the film is not about male aggression, it is about male fragility. All the pivotal scenes prior to the rape focus on the humiliation suffered by Johnny's ego. First, he gets rejected. Then, he is humiliated by Jennifer in front of his friends at the gas station. This double hit obviously tarnishes his image amongst his peers and threatens his alpha male status. When Matthew comes up to him and claims to have been kissed in his place, his ego is dealt an even stronger blow. That's when he decides to use the rape scenario as a way to step back into the spotlight, prove his manhood and reestablish his self confidence. The city woman is just a convenient outlet to achieve this. Much like a warrior's trial, overcoming her monstrous femininity allows the men to gain a form of selfhood, which is exemplified by the returning peace following the disappearance of Jennifer and the heroics displayed by Johnny and Andy in the face of death.

Beauty and the Beast

Unfortunately, and this is the main flaw of the film, Jennifer's character doesn't benefit from such a complex exposition. All through the film, she is pictured as a crude parody of femininity, alternating between the rigid roles of victim and castrator. There are absolutely no shades of grey in her characterization and this is how the film does violence against her. By creating a character so shallow, they have effectively reduced femininity to an accumulation of clichés that only warrant a male conception of females according to which rape is wrong only insofar as it is punishable (by law and by shears). There is no female empowerment here, and those willing to make that contention are either mad or uncaring. Female empowerment does not mean giving women the weapons of men and allowing them to do violence against them. It means giving them their righteous place onscreen as full-fledged, tri-dimensional characters with enough psychological depth to convey the full horror of rape and not merely the genital aspect thereof. It means giving them access to discourse, and not merely have them use prefabricated sentences or mimicked dialogue. All these things, which the film doesn't do, are what contributes to making females alien to male sensibilities, which thus makes their plight unintelligible to us.

The theatrics of exploitation, or dreaming of Header

If it was pure exploitation, I wouldn't be so hard on this film. But instead, it chose to trade the cheap, home-movie look of 1970s exploitation films (which worked so perfectly in early Craven) and go for that pristine, distancing Hollywood shine. In the process, it injected high doses of morality into the narrative as well as failed attempts at dramatic depth, creating inner contradictions that eventually tear the whole project apart from the inside.

While Sarah Butler is a great casting choice (her frail physique making her a perfect victim), the crew of redneck is mostly miscast. Soft-eyed soap opera star Jeff Branson hardly makes a convincing villain, while L.A. art curator Daniel Franzese comes out as a rather awkward redneck. What really compromises their effectiveness, though, is their carefully selected, almost preppy clothing and delicately catered facial hair. Their lack of a Southern accent also impairs their ability to transport us to the dirty South. Obviously, all of these people were cast not as film characters, but as theatrical actors provided with an extended wardrobe. And in the end, far from "becoming" their characters, they come across as a bunch of city guys with a bad case of country-fever.

All the way through I Spit on Your Grave, I was hoping to see grandpap Martin pop out of the scenery and "show them youngins how you really one-up someone". Header wasn't that great, but at least it boasted decent actors for the job. Their thick accent and dirty look was necessary to ascertain the proud roots of their characters. For them, rape needn't be explained in lengthy exposition scenes. It was an established tradition, just like it was in Deliverance. From where I stand, this new iteration of Meir Zarchi's semi-classic is a politically correct rape film that's produced far too nicely to reflect the crass reality it is trying to depict. The clean-looking, sexually challenged rapists are neither convincing, nor are they terrifying. And the attempts at creating dramatic tension without giving the victim half the onscreen time she deserves, well that's just pathetic.

Schlussel, Hoft, Wilson and the vicious circle of rape

As a social phenomenon, rape is very interesting in its ability to instantly reveal one's intrinsic beliefs. The mere word triggers a plethora of diverging, oft-contrasting reactions from people. Most of them involve some sort of castration fantasy. But others are near-apologies. One of the most disturbing and strangely common reactions to rape is the condemnation of the victim. Most advocates of this logic tend to focus on the good looks or skimpy outfits worn by women as a form of justification for male rapists. According to them, beauty and self-confidence are things unfitting for a woman to flaunt, lest she immediately becomes an object of universal lust. You'll notice that this way of thinking is strangely similar to that of many Sunni Muslims. At any rate, it is hardly befitting of any society claiming that its women have been "liberated".

But what's more disturbing in this ideology is how men are depicted as being merely instrumental in the act of rape. It's like every single man is a sex-focused pervert with a brain directly located in his scrotum, a machine which has got to fuck anything even remotely attractive. When tabloid readers nod their heads and suggest that such or such rape victim "should've seen it coming", they're basically saying "she should've known that men can't possibly keep their dicks in their pants". These kinds of statement are offensive to rape victims in that they put the blame on their shoulders for being attractive, but they are also offensive to men, which they liken to beasts unable of self-control.

Going back to Lara Logan, I Spit on Your Grave didn't do anything for her. It didn't do any rape victim justice. It merely uses their plight as a way to replay an almost Freudian castration narrative in which the "lack" is the only thing to characterize women. I understand now that Logan's own personal form of vengeance will be to stand tall again and brave adversity as she used to. She must stay unbroken, and thus the rapists will have lost in their attempts at dominating her and taming her femininity. Yet, in all their pettiness, these beastly men are not nearly as bad as the hardcore hate-mongerers from the backwoods of humanity who immediately used the incident to try and propagate their beliefs. Like starving dogs eyeing a stinking pile of excrements, they jumped on the ugliest headlines possible in order to fuel their hateful agenda. If it is true that hate breeds hate, then they are the living proof thereof.

Illuminating blogger Debbie Schlussel had this to say about the Logan's rape: "It bothers me not a lick when mainstream media reporters who keep telling us Muslims and Islam are peaceful get a taste of just how "peaceful" Muslims and Islam really are. In fact, it kinda warms my heart. Still, it's also a great reminder of just how "civilized" these "people" (or, as I like to call them in Arabic, "Bahai'im" [Animals] are". Obviously, the natural reaction to such drivel is fury. But no matter what I think about Miss Schlussel, I will not give her the satisfaction of dishing out insults for she would certainly revel in them, as she obviously revels in hatred. I will simply try and dissect the aforementioned hate speech. First of all, despite a shy retraction after she was panned and insulted by "the left", which I'm sure she was, there is no denying that she expressed joy about Logan's rape. Hell, the opening paragraph of her blog entry (transcribed above) states that her heart (what heart?) was warmed by Logan getting a taste of violence. These are the kinds of words that you cannot undo, especially when used in a lead! Although I agree with Miss Schlussel about how reading is fundamental, I cannot say that she softens the blow anywhere in the following paragraphs. Quite the contrary.

Following an excerpt from a real media source in which Logan is said to have "suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating", she casually remarks: "Hey, sounds like the threats I get from American Muslims on a regular basis. Now you know what it's like, Lara." Hummm... It kinda seems like she is comparing Logan's ordeal to her own, the poor thing. But although I'm sure she is pelted with hate mail every day, I doubt this mail ever raped her. Being a staple of hate-mongering, the "rape as lesson" narrative is used by Schlussel with clinical coldness in order to do a better job of hate-mongering. This allows her unapologetic and unfocused hatred for Islam to take roots, thus allowing the vicious circle of in-humanism to be completed. First through her carefree attitude toward Logan's rape, then by putting words like peaceful, civilized and people between quotation marks when referring to 15-20% of the world population, she proves herself to be not merely slanderous, but downright misanthropic.

Debbie Schlussel uses rape as a battle trumpet

(this representative photo was taken

while browsing here)

Other criticism of Logan is to be found in the enlightening writings of Jim Hoft and Simone Wilson. Hoft, the eagle-eyed Gateway pundit who spotted Al Sharpton's rarely seen Nazi salute, blamed Logan's "liberal belief system" for her attack. The guy probably doesn't even know the meaning of the word "liberal" but that's another thing... As for his hatred for Logan, it has taken strange proportions since scabrous aspects of her personal life came to be publicized (or invented) by tabloids. From then on, he started a real campaign against her, dishing out elegant puns such as "in-bedded journalist" and "media whore".

As far as I am concerned, his vitriolic antics point to one thing and one thing only: a secret fondness for the lady. I'm just guessing here, but could all these nights in crusty sheets where frustrating wet dreams were chased away by dawn could have gotten to ol' Jim when he heard that Lara had torrid affairs with men other than him? Did he felt betrayed? Or was his soul devoured by jealousy? At any rate, his comments regarding the personal life of Logan are not only unjustified, they're unworthy of any serious journalistic pretense. As for the strange question he asks early in his article, "Why did this attractive blonde female reporter wander into Tahrir Square last Friday?", I'm inclined to think it shows just how he personally lusts for her. More than that, it shows just how natural rape can appear to the advocates of fear and how inclined these people are to blame beauty for it.

What Hoft is basically saying, by focusing on how good Logan looks, is "she should have known". Everybody knows blonde babes are a shoe-in for brutal Arabic gang-rape. And for those who don't know, there's unattractive, beige-haired male reporter Jim Hoft to make it clear. To answer your question, Mr. Hoft, Logan went into Tahrir Square because that is what journalists do. They go where the action is, in order to report the news as it happens, so as to illuminate the world with the beacon of knowledge, even if it means putting one's life on the line. A blogger is not a journalist. At least, very few of them are and you are certainly not one of them. Reprocessing information from other media sources, regurgitating them if you will, and stamping them with a candid, unfocused and partisan comment, this is not journalism. It is just ranting. And using the ordeal of a woman you personally describe as "attractive" as a way to promote hate, well that's just inhumane, unworthy at least, of anything Logan stood for when she "wandered" into Tarhir Square.

Simone Wilson, in a much milder article for salon.com, insisted heavily on what she calls "the Hollywood good looks" of Logan. While she doesn't use them to justify the incident per se, it seems to come naturally for her to mention how "shockingly" beautiful the victim was, and how blonde. Not unlike Hoft, who also uses the irrelevant epithet "blonde" to describe his favorite "media whore", Wilson reduces Logan's entire being and career to her physical appearance. Which is what rapists also do. Wilson would say she doesn't condone rape, which I'm sure she doesn't. Nonetheless, she replicates the very mindset allowing rape to be justified. Insofar as a woman is characterized only by her "good looks", she never comes out as a real person, with real feelings and emotions. She comes out as a flat object, the object of the gaze, which in its superficiality warrants any sort of immediate self-gratification. I Spit on Your Grave's superficial outlook on Jennifer is the same as Wilson's on Logan. While both entities may argue that they don't support rape, they support the underlying mentality, which dictates that a woman is just as good as how fuck-able she looks.

It is what it is, but exactly what is it?

I Spit on Your Grave is nothing but what it represents. It is nothing but the reaction you can derive from it. Its content is only as interesting as the analysis you make of it. But from a purely objective standpoint, the film fails because it misplaces drama, away from a greatly objectified woman whose ordeal is exploited to forward a vacuous moral lesson. It fails because it is too sharply-photgraphed and too theatrical to allow the realistic depiction of a very real issue. It fails because the chic rednecks and unimaginative writer from the narrative are totally un-involving. It fails because its very existence is based on a contradiction. By trying to be politically correct and exploitative at the same time, the film doesn't know when to hit the gas and when to hit the break. The result is a complete, utter crash that leaves no survivor on or offscreen.

1/5 A far too glossy, phallocentric exercise in contradiction.