I Spit on Your Grave: Controversial? Yeah, definitely. Problematic, maybe?

Content Warning: rape and torture

I felt, weird, about the film. I certainly didn’t enjoy it, but there was no excruciating wild spike in my adrenaline or true catharsis when Jennifer takes her revenge. My face was scrunched in distaste for the entirety of the rape scenes, and I had to skip some parts of it, but there wasn’t any like, agonizing deep fear the sprung from inside me, unlike what I personally experienced in watching Human Roast Pork Buns. And I’m curious as to why the much longer, much bloodier, and much more visible rape scenes from I Spit on Your Grave paled in comparison to the Untold Story.

Basically, I think the music in the Untold Story, dark lighting, and repeated focus on the woman’s upper body and her gagged cries, all aesthetically make the experience a tad more gruesome to me. We’ve also already seen a kill in the movie, and I wasn’t exactly expecting a rape to happen so the first time I watched the Untold Story there was a value a shock present. There’re much less actual physical acts of thrusting and such but there’s clearer torture (she gets glass bowls tossed at her, she’s immediately put in a disadvantage with bound hands and a gag). There’s even a short “chase,” in which I mean when the woman tries to leave the shop and her boss like, leads her out, and opens the door only to slam it in her face. All together, it feels more malicious. It feels quick paced and aggressive and we already know what’s in store from the killer because he’s a literal serial killer, and it dehumanizes him.

In contrast, the rape in I Spit on Your Grave is… conflicting I want to say. It’s bright outside, we get to hear Jennifer’s screams, it’s bloody and it’s long, and there’s four guys… each very traumatizing. The fear is less in the scene of rape, but rather knowing that a family man (Johnny), and four other seeming “harmless” men would do something so brutal. The kicker is when the last guy starts to beat Jennifer up in addition to the sexual abuse, the other guys respond where they say the hitting is like, too much. They’re fucked up enough to literally draw the line at kicks and punches on a woman but not rape? And I think thinking deeper about the actions and mannerisms in I Spit on Your Grave, make the movie out to be more disturbing thinking back to it, while the Untold Story is more immediately horrifying.

And I think that’s where I start to get confused. In 20 years, I’m probably going to remember the horror I felt in the Untold Story, while I won’t remember any large scale, emotional intensity from I Spit on Your Grave.

Which is why I’m extra confused about what meanings and messages can be read from I Spit on Your Grave. In the Untold Story, the rape can kind of be explained in that there’s serial killer, and it’s very clear that he’s bad and awful. In contrast, we get to know some of the guys in I Spit on Your Grave, and it makes it more unsettling to have any sort of humanization of them (fear of dying and such), because then anyone could be capable of rape and torture. But there’s not a clear message on morality in it. Jennifer gets her revenge, she apologizes to God and is seen as the heroine in the movie, but the way she kills and the framing is telling. As Barbara creed points out, “She arouses a fear of castration and death while simultaneously playing on a masochistic desire for death, pleasure, and oblivion.” I think she also evokes a more sexual provocation as well though. Jennifer’s naked body is on screen quite a lot, and it’s especially on display during her rape(s), however the camera doesn’t pan, or linger on flattering angles. It does that when she kills.

Her revenge is eroticized, and what’s disturbing to me about that, is the sexual aspect in the killings overshadows the actual murders. It takes people a solid one and a half minutes of no air to fall unconscious, and a total of around four minutes to actually die. Matthew is hung by Jennifer, but he definitely falls unconscious and then dies way before that threshold. Same with the last guy drowning? Treading water very poorly? I couldn’t tell which it was supposed to be. We have a full scene of her and Johnny talking with her bare in front of a mirror and we see little gore of his castration or fear until there’s blood, with the classical music trying to drown out his screams (which, is the one scene I actually felt a wee bit cathartic at??). Like, as soon as a knife started to castrate him, wouldn’t he scream, or struggle to get away? There’s quite a fair bit of nerves down there and I really don’t believe it’d take blood the start the screaming. I really can’t buy that he was so disillusioned by sex and unguarded like that just because this time she appeared willing. Basically, it felt like Jennifer was abused because she was unfortunate and a woman, all the men die because they’re really dumb, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. Like, I’m troubled by the fact that had Matthew killed Jennifer when he had the knife the first time, none of these guys would have been killed (maybe caught but we don’t know that). It’s their mistake that kills them, not the pure vengeance or spirit of Jennifer’s will to survive. (Also, I think it could be interesting to compare Jennifer to Final Girl tropes).

I’m also troubled by how little we see Jennifer feel traumatized in retrospect to the horror she endured (not that I’s enjoy it, I’d probably feel more disgusted by the rapes and that’s the point). Like, she gets a little bit of like, a montage of her washing herself, crying, laying there, and it’s awful and saddening. But then we cut to the guys at a diner for a long exposition. Like, it just felt rather unsympathetic to Jennifer, and almost dismissive of the trauma she experienced. This is then echoed by her really cold, but still very put together, revenge look of all black and no smiles. Although the rape is drawn out, the effects of that rape on the women are not as drawn out or emphasized, and thus the tale garners more to the male’s narrative of a vengeful woman than a plight of a tortured woman against those who harmed her.

That’s just my reading, and having rape or sexual abuse in any media is hard, but I feel like I Spit on Your Grave stayed too grey on its portrayal.