Movie Review: REVENGE (2017)

A woman wronged, betrayed and violated not once, not twice, but three times, a casualty of the most toxic aspects of masculinity: the perpetrator who only takes, the bystander who consciously decides not to bother caring, and the silencer who will do anything to keep his secrets. Each step is an atrocity of its own, piling up into a waking nightmare. Now, discarded by those who care only for themselves, the woman is left for dead.

However, she's not dead at all. Finding reserves of strength that she didn't know she possessed, she rises from the ashes of her old life, reborn. Hell hath no fury like a woman...betrayed.

REVENGE is a 2017 French-made film that condemns, in the strongest terms, toxic masculinity, and bashes rape-culture right in its face. There have been a lot of films in the "woman gets even" sub-genres of Action, Drama, and Horror, and most of them have been what amounts to exploitation films.

One of the most well-known, and notorious, films in this sub-genre is the 1978 rape-revenge film, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, a film I actively avoided watching since I first saw it on a Video Store shelf around 1985 or so. I finally watched it about five years ago, I believe, and its definitely earned its notoriety and outright infamy. It has some great qualities, most notably the excellent outdoor cinematography and the execution of the revenge scenes, but the two gang-rape scenes take up a whole 30 minutes of the movie's 102 minute run-time, and its EXTREMELY hard to watch. Branded a video-nasty in the UK, it remains a subject of controversy to this day, and a 2010 remake of the film spawned two sequels of its own.

REVENGE, however, is a very different film. Oh sure, it has its similarities: a remote location, multiple male assailants, and even the name of the protagonist (Jennifer in "Grave", and Jen in "Revenge"), who is assaulted and ultimately left for dead before she gets justice. Here, though, is where the similarities begin to fade away.

First off, REVENGE is directed by a woman, Coralie Fargeat, who brings a woman's perspective to the genre. Her approach is multi-layered and sometimes metaphorical. At the start of the film, her camera tends to eyeball Matilda Lutz’s Jen in ways that definitely epitomize the sexually exploitative male-gaze, but as the film unfolds, that all starts to change as expectations get turned on their proverbial heads. The rape scene itself doesn't play out at ALL like they do in these types of films, as very little is shown aside from Jen's horrified expressions, and later only her screams of pain and fear. It's not shot with an eye for any titillation at all, something that cannot be said about I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, and I really appreciated that thoughtfulness.

The striking backdrop of the Moroccan desert becomes particularly stark thanks to the film's highly-saturated color palette, and as Jen becomes increasingly empowered and actualized, her facial expressions become much more prominent than the rest of her body, and the film features bouts of quick, hard, and very bloody violence. In fact, by the time the movie wraps, there's so much blood, you could be forgiven for thinking that Sam Rami had dropped by with a flatbed loaded-down with barrels of corn-syrup, and food-dye.

Bloody. Bloody. BLOODY. And every drop that Jen sheds is repaid tenfold before she's done.

REVENGE has gained a lot of acclaim, and currently boasts a 93% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Its an excellent action-revenge tale. It hits hard, hits fast, explores several themes and arguments surrounding rape-culture and toxic-masculinity, and doesn't let up once it gets going. It's available for streaming on SHUDDER, and it gets my highest recommendation.

FIVE goddamn stars. *****