I had a thorough checklist of what I wanted to see in
a remake of
I Spit On Your Grave. The version that opens in select cities tomorrow exceeds my expectations. The closing credits even have a nod to how the 1978 original wasn’t totally packaged as an exploitation film. The female vigilante flick originally had its feminist intent declared with the title of
Day of the Woman. Going with
I Spit On Your Grave was just a smart move to ensure that audiences knew they were getting lots of savage action.
The remake stars Sarah Butler as the heroine who runs into rapists at her isolated cabin in the woods. Her living nightmare is handled as brutally as in the original. There’s no sense of titillation, and her subsequent revenge adds a great deal of logic to the fever dream that made up the original film’s second half. It doesn’t even hurt when the new
I Spit On Your Grave starts swiping from a recent popular horror franchise. That franchise could have stood to swipe more from
I Spit On Your Grave.
There’s still one way that the new
I Spit On Your Grave could make me even happier. Maybe this remake will send Roger Ebert into another Leftist conniption fit. I’ve
written before about Ebert being a creep, but my revulsion has nothing to do with the longtime film critic’s liberal politics. It’s actually inspired by how Ebert—along with Gene Siskel—tried to build their national reputation as part of the Reagan Revolution.
Naturally, the PBS film critics misunderstood Reagan. My first impression of Ebert was as a blustering fool attempting to become America’s Official Censor. He spent a lot of time whining about slasher films and, specifically,
I Spit On Your Grave. Yes, it’s nice that Ebert wrote
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. He’s still the petty little man who went on daytime talk shows and tried to stop movie theaters from showing some of the best films of my adolescence.
And he didn’t mean a word of it. By 1990, Ebert was rushing to catch up with the indie revolution, and dutifully gave a positive review to
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Ebert admired the film’s nihilistic qualities and “flat, unforgiving realism.” He particularly liked the “unrelenting power” of the title killer, whose image remains nestled in some hipster’s t-shirt drawer next to Che Guevara.
The most important thing about
I Spit On Your Grave—both the original and (thankfully) the remake—is that the villains are sleazy and pathetic. They are truly the scum of the earth. They’re so uncool that I would have been forgiving if the remake made one particular nod to political correctness. The remake does the exact opposite, which helps to create a final shot that equals the original’s. Ebert, of course, didn’t appreciate that final shot's impact back in 1978. Maybe he’ll be kinder to the remake. It depends on what’s cool now.
