Day of the Woman

Blu Review: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
18 – 113mins – 2010
Written by: Stuart Morse
Based on the 1978 film, written and directed by: Meir Zarchi
Directed by: Steven R. Monroe
Starring: Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Andrew Howard, Daniel Franzese, Rodney Eastman, Chad Lindberg, Tracey Walter
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“Sorry? Sorry isn't good enough.”

My mother has always been outspoken in her abhorrence of any film which derives entertainment from real life misery. Well known examples include Titanic, United 93 and pretty much any war film ever made. While I Spit On Your Grave may not be based upon an actual documented case, anyone with taste will be hard-pressed not to be repulsed by its all-too-horrifically-plausible set up. Is it really entertaining to watch a girl get brutally raped by a gang of lowlife degenerates, then set about exacting ghastly revenge on her attackers?

Needless to say my mother isn't even aware I watched this recent remake of the highly controversial (and for many years banned) 1978 Meir Zarchi torture flick. It definitely isn't for family viewing, the easily upset or quickly offended. Although in its defence, anyone who does decide to watch a film titled I Spit On Your Grave knows all too well what they are letting themselves in for and can hardly bemoan that it isn't The Last Unicorn.

From a technical standpoint it is hard to knock the film – it doesn't look as cheap as you might expect, the downcast colour palette compliments the tone ideally, and the actors do a disturbingly authentic job – but proficient editing is hardly what this film is going to be remembered for. While Meir Zarchi's prototype was all the more hard-hitting for its stark originality, this 2010 remake arrives in a morally-jaded society where it must battle for rental store shelf space alongside a raft of copycat offenders: Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, Taken, The Last House on the Left are but four examples, and two of those have likewise had 21st century reboots!

Is I Spit On Your Grave guilty of “making light” of its subject matter? Not at all – this is in no way a glamorous production. Is it guilty of crossing a moral boundary in its desperate attempt to be ever-more extreme? Well, that's a different story, and one up for debate, particularly when you add into the controversy-touting mix a sinisterly corrupt Sherriff (Howard) and a mentally challenged gang member (Lindberg) who is bullied into taking part in the crime…

Putting aside all that “two wrongs don't make a right” malarkey – which doesn't quite stand true when you want to see these scumbags suffer – it's still hard to believe that victim Jennifer Hills (Butler) is *quite* up to executing the poetic justice she serves. Her karmic torture devices bring to mind Jigsaw's impossible contraptions in Saw and the vigilante vengeance witnessed in Law Abiding Citizen; they're too clever for a psychologically scarred person lying low in the forest to carry out and that jars because it breaks the believability of the stomach-churning extended rape ordeal.


In a CR@B Shell: With a relentless tone which never dips below tense, I Spit On Your Grave is a sadist, disgusting and vicious exercise in taking the law into your own hands. You'll wince, you'll look away, you'll curl your hands into fists in futile anguish, and you'll never rent a cabin in the woods on your own ever again.
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"Special" Interest

DVD Review: DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
12 – 114mins – 2010
Screenplay by: David Guion, Michael Handelman
Based on Le Dîner de Cons, written by: Francis Veber
Directed by: Jay Roach
Starring: Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Jermaine Clement, Stephanie Szostak, Lucy Punch, David Walliams, Kristen Shaal, Bruce Greenwood
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Bandwagon-jumping, idea-nabbing Hollywood remakes of cult foreign language films are always at risk of missing the je ne sais quoi which made the originals so exceptional, more interested are they in racking up the A-list stars and splashing the budget on extravagant spectacle. But Jay Roach’s adaptation of Francis Veber's Le Dîner de Cons (1998) was in particular danger of falling flat on its identity-stealing face, given the delicate nature of the French flick’s farcical comedy.

If screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman were too gentle on the mean-spirited jibes they would be accused of undercooking the ludicrously disreputable premise, but if they went too far with the pointing and laughing they would tout controversy for picking on easy targets. Consequently, they served up a Dinner which was neither too hot or too cold; playing up the weirdness factor for easy laughs, but downplaying the discrimination by making everyone a schmuck.

Paul Rudd plays mild-mannered Tim, a promotion-desperate business man who is invited to a corporate dinner with a difference. Each employee must bring a “special” guest to the company’s annual “Dinner for Winners”, in a bid to impress the snootily bourgeois executives with the biggest buffoon they can find. See, I wasn’t joking when I used the words “ludicrously disreputable” and “mean-spirited”.

Enter Date Night’s Steve Carell as timid IRS agent Barry, a bespectacled, dead-mouse-diorama-making easy target in an anorak and slacks. A man who – for all his most well-meaning intentions – leaves a trail of utter chaos in his wake. Tim believes Barry is the perfect guest to help him win promotion from his vile, bullying boss (Bruce Greenwood), but over the course of the next 24 hours, simpleton Barry first dismantles Tim’s life, then wins him over with his kind heart and naïve virtuosity.

Predictably, the tasteless dinner provides the menagerie of “idiotic” guests – a blind fencer, a vulture lover, a pet psychic, a beard-growing champion – a chance to turn the tables on the sniggering bigots who look down on them. But for all of the over-the-top absurdities which befall the hapless characters, Carell evokes a sympathetic light on sad sap Barry, and you never catch yourself laughing at him, only with. As such, Dinner of Schmucks never offends like it might so easily have done, with every character coming off as unhinged as any other.

On a final note, the film's comedic cast is particularly remarkable, given its eccentric mixture of cross-Atlantic talent, with Rudd, Carell and The Hangover's Zach Galifianakis rubbing shoulders with the UK's very own David Little Britain Walliams, Chris The IT Crowd O'Dowd and Lucy Vexed Punch. French-born cutie Stephanie Szostak and New Zealand's Jermaine Clements continue the multi-culturally flavoured platter, while the latter's wide-eyed Flight of the Conchords co-star Kristin Shaal also makes a foreseeably kooky turn. But then kooky is the dish of the day at this Dinner.


In a CR@B Shell: Sympathy replaces cruelty in this lightweight remake which revels in its zany ensemble of Schmucks and makes fools of us all, so at least we don't feel quite so guilty about having a giggle.
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Smells Like School Spirit

DVD Review: TORMENTED
15 – 87mins – 2009
Written by: Stephen Prentice
Directed by: Jon Wright
Starring: Tuppence Middleton, Alex Pettyfer, April Pearson, Dimitri Leonidas, Georgia King, Larissa Wilson, Olly Alexander, James Floyd, Calvin Dean
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The age old morality tale of the underdog triumphing over the dominant alpha clique is given a supernatural makeover for the noughties teen market in this high school Brit horror-com. Thus, Tormented stars a raft of former Skins starlets in short skirts, an abundance of bad language, witty banter, sex, booze, blood and gore, as overweight loner Darren “Shrek” Mullet (Calvin Dean) is pushed to the brink of depression following years of bullying, and commits suicide.

Questionable subject for a comedy, you may think, and I certainly agree. There are times when the devastating enormity of the all-too-real situation – particularly when we watch mobile phone footage of his savage victimisation at the hands of the school's “cool kids” – does offset the sarcastic tone which underlies the slapstick horror, but it's hard to hold on to your principals when Mullet's reanimated corpse starts to exact revenge upon his tormentors in a number of fiendishly outlandish ways.

But as gore-iously inventive as they are, there's no real satirical slant to any of the murders, which does mean that things become a little repetitive as the runtime progresses: Death, panic, death, panic, death... etcetera. And as hurtful as their teasing was, whether the band of peer pressured adolescents *quite* deserve the fatal comeuppance they receive (does one wrong turn deserve another?) dissolves into a moot point as the body count spirals out of control and even Mullet's only friend falls foul of the hell bent zombie.

The film's moral commentary is further muddied when Darren's secret crush, cute-and-proper Head Girl Justine (Tuppence Middleton), is also targeted (and her punishment far more drawn out) because she “dared” start a relationship after the deceased shy guy who fancied her from afar never plucked up the courage to ask her out when alive. Is that fair? Really?

For all of Tormented's broad cultural stereotyping – jocks, sluts, emo punks, geeks, prissy virgins – it must be said that writer Stephen Prentice does a spot on job of depicting the power struggles which occur in Britain's state schools. I only hope that the same is not true of the horrendously inadequate teachers (one of whom is as big a bully as his pupils), or the suspiciously absent parents, but it probably is, and probably explains why the young 'uns are such first class idiots to begin with.


In a CR@B Shell: A confusing lesson in life, but for all of its ethical quandaries Tormented does deliver a wild n' wacky slant on an archetypal concept. Its teen demographic will find little to groan about as limbs and bras go flying and the laughter count is sustained throughout.
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