I Spit On Your Grave 3: Vengeance is Mine

The "I Spit On Your Grave" series is a long loved (And equally hated) series of Rape/revenge films, with the first of which arguably being the film that kickstarted the genre. In 2010, we got a remake, starring Sarah Butler and not long after, it got a sequel with no ties to the original or the remake. Now, we have the second sequel to the 2010 remake, which features Sarah Butler returning as the beloved Jenifer Hills.

None of the movies in this series were particularly tasteful, but they were serious and treated the lead characters who had gone through enormous trauma with care and sensibility. Whether you came for the rape scenes or the revenge scenes, everything felt grounded in reality, and the movie had you cheering for the lead.

Unfortunately for the newest installment, the character we know and love has been turned into a caricature of a rape victim complete with unnecessary hostility, a resentment for every man she encounters and a tendency to wear over-sexualised outfits in order to lure her prey.

The storyline this time around is Jenifer seeking help in a rape recovery group. It's here she befriends Marla, who is just as quickly raped and killed off as she is introduced. She spends her short, poorly-acted appearances convincing us we should hate every man that ever was, because he was a man.

Despite slaughtering a bunch of men in her previous movie, Marla's aggressive nature disturbs Jenifer. She's cool with melting a guys face off with acid and anally raping a police officer with a shotgun as long as you don't talk about it later, because that's unacceptable.

Jenifer soon decides to take vengeance on the people who hurt her new friends in the rape recovery group. What follows is about three kills, lots of close-ups of Jenifer scowling at men, and her strange obsession with dressing up as school girls and prostitutes.

The rape/revenge genre was always about women taking back power from men who wronged them, it's the key aspect of these movies. In this film however, it feels like we've taken twenty steps back. Jenifer wears skanky outfits, moves provocatively and seductively around rapists and then delivers plenty of puns and one-liners after dishing out her uninspired justice. They're sexualising rape victims and portraying them as a specific stereotype, drenched in angst and misandry.

Towards the end of the film, Jenifer no longer cares who she attacks, even going as far as to attack men who have been nice to her, and a man who she claims was about to rape her, despite her verbally giving consent.

The film is an absolute mess that gives off a horrible message about people who have gone through trauma and feel wronged. If we were to believe ISOYG3, any woman who is raped hates all men, hides hostility towards women who have not been raped, and of course, forget that they're human at all in order to destroy the lives of people that are trying to help them. 

I've never been into feminism but if there ever was a movie that changed my mind, it would be this one. I was physically uncomfortable in a particular scene where Jenifer lures a pedophile into a warehouse, calls him daddy and spreads her legs and dances like a ho for him, all while wearing a schoolgirl outfit. Jenifer, he's in the warehouse, you can stop this nonsense and cut off his wiener now. All of these scenes felt titillating, and came across offensive more than anything else.

The gore on show is great, the acting is mostly good as well, particularly Sarah Butler, but the movie is an exploitative, meninist wet-dream, that seems to promote the message of "All women are crazy," while simultaneously saying it's totally cool to look at rape victims as it's own fetish.

I'm embarrassed for the series, this is a huge step backwards for women and horror.