It’s like the middle of the month is trying to get revenge on us for trying to celebrate an awesome month of horror!
Today we’re covering…
Revenge!
Movie Details:
- Release Date: 2017
- “Run”time: 1 hour 48 minutes
- Where to watch it: Streaming
- Directed by: Coralie Fargeat
- Written by: Coralie Fargeat
- Starring:
- Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz
- Kevin Janssens
- Vincent Colombe
Synopsis: A young girl is taken advantage of and left for dead in the desert. She turns the tables to get her…. Revenge.
Open Stab Wounds (out of 10): 4
Review: Vengeance movies are a guilty pleasure of mine. Many of them are not very good, oftentimes they have scenes that just stick with you, and it always makes me smile, seeing a scumbag get what they deserve. Going into them, you know something abhorrent is going to happen to our protagonist and those scenes are a bit difficult to watch. What comes after though is almost always absolute carnage. Today, we watched Revenge.
We open on Richard (Kevin Janssens) and Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) riding in a helicopter to a house out in the middle of the desert. Initially it seems as though they are on a couples getaway, but Richard’s friends Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchède) show up the next morning for the real reason they are there, the boy’s annual hunting trip. The four party that night and it is established that Jen will be leaving the next day so the boys can go on their hunt. Things don’t quite get there.
The next morning, Jen wakes up in an empty bed and walks out to see Stan sitting at a table with breakfast, while Dimitri is milking a hangover in the pool; Richard went into town to get their hunting permits. This isolation for Jen leads to the most difficult scene to watch, when Stan forces himself on her and Dimitri turns a blind eye to it. (Note: This scene is done in a very visceral way that, to me, didn’t fit the tone of the rest of the movie.) Richard arrives back at the house and that is where things turn again.
Instead of supporting her, he basically tries to bribe her into leaving (not surprising, since it’s already been established Jen is his mistress). Richard smacks her when she tries to get him to call the police and Jen ends up running from the house. The three men run out in pursuit and Jen ends up cornered on the edge of a cliff. Richard tricks Jen into thinking he’s called the helicopter pilot and then shoves her to her death… or so the three men think.
I’m not going to detail the entire plot. If you’ve seen revenge movies, you can guess the rest. Jen didn’t die from the fall. When they show up later to dispose of the body, she evades them. She is suddenly filled with pure badassery and proceeds to get her Revenge™.
This movie felt like a sixteen year old kid watched I Spit on Your Grave, then proceeded to go “What if this happened in the desert with a really hot girl?” Of course his buddies were there to chime in and say “What if that guy got killed like this?!?!” While watching, there are an abundance of moment that will make you say “No fucking way!”, but not in an excited way. It’s in the absurdity of plausibility being thrown out the window and being replaced with “because it’s a movie” logic.
The scene where she was assaulted felt so out of place, compared to how the rest of it was done. It was such a real and painful scene to watch, but surrounded by absurdity with the rest of the film. Perhaps that is part of the commentary or perhaps it was just a shit movie.
The music was nothing special, but not bad. The gore and practical effects were actually really well done, even with how absurd some of those moments were. The acting wasn’t that bad and I’m curious how Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz is going to do as Red Sonja; she’s certainly got the badass part down. The final scene was absolutely ridiculous and went on a bit longer than it should have (round and round they go…). Overall, I think this movie had some ok ideas, nothing original, but there was far too much over the top absurdity for me to call it good.
I’d had Revenge on my watchlist for a while now. It should’ve stayed there. My rating is higher than it probably should be and that is just because I liked Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz and the gore was on point. Save yourself the pain and go watch something else.
Oh… one more thing! “Mexican Beer” would have been backwards! (just cut to the cave scene if you want to know what I’m talking about)
BRANDON’S THOUGHTS:
Revenge flicks are not guilty pleasures of mine. I think they’re unnecessarily cruel and overly exploitative for the women involved. I think there were points in this flick that it kind of commented on the “male gaze” and I could appreciate that. But there were many “wait, what the heck? Nope” moments that I had a hard time getting past. Also, I felt like they misused the peyote, haha.
I give it 4 out of 10
Thanks for reading and watching along with us! Be sure to keep up with all 31 days of our Halloween Horror Film coverage!
Oh, and make sure to follow Brandon on Twitter @BarnyardCruz and Kevin @Solucid!