Movie Review: Avenged a.k.a. Savaged (2013)

 

Yet another surprisingly good little flick that came to me courtesy of October Coast Publicity! They really have some good stuff over there. Avenged is essentially a rape-revenge movie, but it is one that is unlike any other that you have probably seen before. It will be in theaters and on VOD on March 6, 2015, with a DVD release on April 21.

Young deaf-mute Zoe is travelling through the desert to meet up with her fiancé when she is kidnapped, raped, and killed by a group of local hooligans. A Native American finds her body and brings her back to life, not knowing that the spirit of a slaughtered chief has also possessed her at the same time. Using this power, Zoe sets off in her quest to punish her attackers one by one.

If that premise makes you furrow your brow a little bit, please do not be fooled. The film's biggest success is that it sets up just the right tone for itself, and wonderfully carries it through all the way to the end. Avenged never once feels like an exploitation film, never feels cheesy or silly, and never really goes over the top (even when it comes to the gore). Instead the film is moody and sad, slightly depressing but also strangely uplifting at the same time, just because it's always nice to see justice served.

Though at times a little stilted here and there, the acting by the entire cast is impressive. The two standouts for me were Rodney Rowland as Trey, and of course Amanda Adrienne as the lead character Zoe. She does an absolutely amazing job with a role that is entirely physical, having to convey all her emotions and create an entire character through facial expressions and body movement. Even after being reanimated, Zoe retains her humanity and is still in pain over what happened to her - and what is continuing to happen to her - and over the fact that she knows that she will never be with her fiancé again. Again, Adrienne conveys all these things beautifully. Rowland plays the lead bad guy Trey. While his actions against Zoe are despicable, I really liked his acting and his approach to the character. Trey is your average backwoods jerk, and Rowland never tries to make him any more than that - not as a criminal mastermind, or ultra-evil superhero villain.

The only time that the movie shows it's low budget is in a couple of scenes where the CGI is not exactly up to par with bigger budget films. There is a particular bit with a TV that really does not look all that great. Other than that, Avenged is filmed absolutely beautifully with perfect colors and lighting that match the film's mood and tone. The gore is a mix of mostly practical effects with some CGI, and they all look great. Zoe's first revenge kill involves treating a guy's intestines like a length of rope, and things don't let up from there. The makeup on Zoe's deteriorating body is equally impressive as the gore, and I loved her ingenious use of duct tape to (literally) keep herself together. There are also some scenes that involve effects of a supernatural nature. Once again, this material is handled in a respectful, serious way and does not come off as silly.

Writer/director Michael Ojeda's Avenged is an impactful, striking revenge tale that hits all the right notes. It is bloody enough to satisfy all those gorehounds like me, but also has a lot of heart and fantastic group of actors playing equally fantastic characters.

Movie Review: I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

I Spit on Your Grave was truly and honestly the only horror phenomenon that I thought was safe from the recent remake frenzy. And don't get me wrong, I've liked a good number of the remakes that have come out so far, it's just that I Spit seemed like the kind of movie that critics and censors wanted to forget about. But now it's back and I'm frankly a little conflicted about the outcome.

So the plot is mostly similar to the original - young, pretty writer Jennifer Hills (with almost the same hairdo, might I add) rents a cabin in the woods to write a new book. She meets up with the local hoods at the gas station, embarrasses one of the dudes and rejects his advances, so they get all testosterone rage-y and assault her in various ways one night. They think they killed her, but she survives and comes back to seek her vengeance against the attackers.

The first thing to piss me off was the country bumpkin rapists not liking Jennifer because she was a hoity toity "big city gal." Same as in the original, they say that she didn't come out to the woods to write her book, she went there to have sex. UGH. I am so sick of this plot point. The rednecks always hate the city people because they think they are all rich and snobby. So cliche. Think of something else, for the love of all that is gory.

I almost completely checked out of the movie when the sheriff becomes the main instigator of Jennifer's assault. Maybe I watch too many cop shows but I have far too much respect for police officers to accept all the sadistic, crooked, or incompetent cops that are portrayed in movies. It is 2011, people, and I don't care how backwoods someone is, it is still unbelievable to me that a sheriff would be the ringleader of a brutal gang rape and (supposed) murder.

All right, let's talk torture now, shall we? First of all, the scene at the beginning where Jennifer is running and comes across the abandoned cabin where she eventually carries out her revenge was so unnecessary. They have spooky shots of the bathtub and the hedge clippers, and I'm screaming at the TV, "STOP FORESHADOWING SO MUCH! WE GET IT!" Anyway. Overall, Jennifer's methods of torture and murder were too elaborate for me (although one could argue that she did have a whole month to plan it out), but it was a nice touch that each of the men's demises paralleled the kind of person they were or the way that they abused Jennifer.

Then again, Jennifer herself kept cheapening the moments by repeating back to the men the things they said during her assault. "I thought you were an ass man," "You said, 'Suck it bitch,'" and all that weird "show horse" crap. It became almost comical, and while you were still rooting for the assholes to die, the seriousness of the crime they committed was practically lost.

One thing that made me uncomfortable about the original was how Jennifer seduced her rapists into her revenge traps. It just never felt right and although you could say that she was being clever by catering to their misogynistic attitudes to trick them, it almost confirms their feelings that women are whores and use sex to get what they want. So I'm glad the remake had Jennifer showing up as a total badass and the men being immediately afraid of her and what she was going to do to them. I especially loved how she whacked both Andy and Stanley with a baseball bat and was able to control them both at the same time. She has the power now and that is the real message of the movie.

At times, her revenge seemed almost worse than their initial crime. Although the first rape by Matthew was incredibly brutal, I was squirming in my seat when Jennifer rammed the shotgun as hard as she could up the sheriff's ass. Speaking of this scene, just wanted to say that I know what you were doing here, filmmakers. You're trying to rival the ending to The Last House on the Left remake, aren'tcha?!

OH! Oh, oh, oh, you wanna talk about pissing me off? How about Andy's line about how after the rape, Matthew was acting all strange and as Andy says, "I think he even feels guilty." I about jumped in the TV and ripped the dude's face off. "I think he even feels guilty"??? As if there's nothing to feel guilty about. Angry Michele. Very, very angry Michele. BUT, it was the selling point in making me really enjoy the payoff of him getting his face melted off in a bathtub of lye. 

Final Thoughts:

Not gonna lie - I LOVE how they recreated the original poster art. Grey on white looks awesome for this kind of movie and is quite evocative looking.

The sheriff's daughter's name is Chastity? In a rape-revenge movie? Is that some kind of a joke?!

Meir Zarchi, the director of the original film, was executive producer on the remake. Hm.

Blogger is also pissing me off because the text is not wrapping around the pictures like I like it. Doesn't have anything to do with the movie but it does this every once in a while and it really annoys me.

Movie Review: Seven Days (Les Sept Jours Du Talion, 2010)

My introduction into the amazing Halloween month of October will (sadly) probably be no different than my previous posts. I do not have the confidence to make lists of the best movies to watch on Halloween night or anything like that, for I readily admit that there are still huge holes in my horror movie watching experiences. Perhaps this month I can continue with my Catching Up On The Classics thread of reviews, and by the end of the month, my horror-lover cred will have a few more points than it did at the beginning of the month.

But that's for later. My first review of October is not a classic horror film, but rather a brand spanking new revenge film from those wonderful Canadian folks called Seven Days.

First of all, a nod to James at Behind the Couch for reviewing this film a few weeks ago (read it here). I caught the synopsis and his thoughts about it and was very intrigued by the plot. I'm always into revenge stories - but perhaps more so the ongoing and never-ending debate about morality with revenge. Both sides are justified, and yet neither side is justified.

Seven Days is the methodical and quiet tale of Bruno and Sylvie Hamel, a family broken by the rape and murder of their daughter, Jasmine, only eight years old. Despite the police catching the killer, Anthony Lemaire, Bruno decides to take his own kind of justice. He kidnaps Lemaire and takes him to a remote cottage where he will keep and torture him until killing him after seven days, on his daughter's birthday.

Once happily married, now torn apart by tragedy.

For me, this is ultimate revenge tale setup. We've had revenge movies of guys whose wives or girlfriends were killed by drug lords or whatever, but those scenarios are not powerful enough. This one - the loss of life and innocence of a young girl and her father taking revenge - is the perhaps the only revenge tale I would understand. Why always the father? Simple. The mother is supposed to be the mother. She's supposed to be nurturing and understanding and not wanting any harm to come to anyone, either the perpetrators or especially her own family. She never wants her husband to do anything rash to get him into trouble. Maybe it's that age-old thing of women and girls wanting a man there to protect him. Maybe it's the showing of real raw emotion when a man lashes out against someone who hurt someone he loves.

I give the movie credit for that, but at the same time, this is the not the most original revenge story. Seems like there have been a lot of avenging fathers in films recently (The Last House on the Left, Taken). And yet it seems to work all the time, at least for me. And original or not, I still think this film is effective on a high level because of the different issues it brings up related to revenge and morality.

Legally, of course, Bruno is completely in the wrong. Taking the law into your own hands is a no-no, but what I think this film did that was interesting was having Bruno kidnap and torture Lemaire AFTER he was in the custody of the police, with overwhelming DNA evidence as to his guilt. Sure, he might have been able to get away with a lesser sentence at trial but I'm thinking not many would show much leniency to child rapist/murderer. Bruno would almost undoubtedly have gotten justice for his daughter, yet he chose to think he knew better than the law and take him before he could be tried by a judge. This makes it hard for the audience to side with him.

Pretty fucking brutal.

The rapist himself even gives a convincing argument against Bruno's actions. During the torture, Lemaire tells Bruno his tale of woe, of being abused as a child. That certainly wasn't enough to get me on his side, but then he said something that was like a smack in the face. He said, "I need help. Don't try to teach me a lesson by introducing more violence into my life. More violence is not going to solve my problem, but only make me worse." Not verbatim, I know, but that was the gist of what he meant. Even if Lemaire was lying about his abuse, I believe he's right. Violence against one's abusers may feel good for the moment, but it doesn't solve anything. But then again, child molesters are not generally known to be rehabilitative. They are the ones most likely to slip. So there we are again, going back and forth on the issue.

Bruno's wife never thinks what he did was right, although that could be her harboring some anger at Bruno for his (supposed) negligence in first noticing their daughter's disappearance. Frankly, I didn't like that bitch. They are both grieving tremendously and yet she always manages to slip in a comment about how he didn't listen to the messages sooner and that it was basically his fault that their daughter was dead. I know it was probably just the hurt talking, but there was a time, during their screaming match on the phone, that I truly believed that she thought it was his fault. And I cannot forgive an accusation like that.

The torture scenes are at times brutal but not overly graphic. I read one review that compared this film to the Saw franchise, The Devil's Rejects and Wolf Creek. Nonsense. Believe me, Seven Days has nothing in common with any of those films. There's a sledgehammer, off-the-cuff surgery, and a severe whipping with a length of chain but it is nothing that most viewers wouldn't be able to handle. It's the words coming from the rapist's mouth and the father's uncontrollable and almost insane grief that will make this film hard for some people to watch.

The ultimate loss.

The most disturbing part of the movie for me, however, had nothing to do with the torture. Before the title credits roll, we have the whole set up of the girl going off to walk around the neighborhood by herself to deliver invitations for her birthday party. She never makes it back. When Bruno is showing the police the route she would have taken, they discover her dead body. Nothing is left to the imagination as the father hunches dumbfounded and grief-stricken at her side. He sees the blood on her thighs and skirt. He sees her underwear around her ankle. And worst of all, he sees - and therefore, we see - the blank stare of death on her blue face, open-eyed and afraid. That was the worst part of the movie to me. The close-up shot of the girl's dead face actually made me shut my eyes and look away.

Another interesting thing this movie brings to the table is Bruno's refusal to speak to Lemaire even while he's torturing him. I was expecting him to be spouting off obscenities and saying things much in the style of Christopher Meloni on Law and Order: SVU. "Do you like raping little girls?" That kind of stuff. But he doesn't say a word to him. He just goes into the room were Lemaire is strung up like a pig carcass and starts the day's work. Does he prefer to let his actions talk? Or can he just not bring himself to say to the man all the things he is feeling about him and what he did? Is it too hard for him to do that?

Detective Mercure.

There is also a subplot dealing with the detective who is trying to track Bruno down (having kidnapped Lemaire right from a police transport van and leaving his own car behind, he really didn't make it all that difficult for them to figure out what happened). This detective, Mercure, lost his wife recently when she was shot in a grocery store robbery. We see him obsessively watching the surveillance footage of her murder in every scene where he is at home. You would think that he would be the most conflicted about the situation, to agree with Bruno or not, yet Mercure goes after Bruno hardcore, insisting that it is Bruno he is trying to save and not Lemaire.

At the end of the film, as it should be, we are given no answer. Bruno is taken into custody himself by police and asked by a reporter if he still thinks vengeance is right. He says no. He is then asked if he regrets what he has done. He says no. I don't think that it's that he hasn't learned anything from his experience and the conflicting opinions around him. There's just no right or wrong answer to the issue. Legally it's wrong, but the heart and soul has more power over any law, and people have a hard time making up their mind on what they really believe. Bruno's dreamy vision of his daughter suggests that he realizes the pointlessness of his actions because she will still be dead, but then his last line of the film tells us that he would probably do it again the same way if he had the chance. Back and forth on the issue again.

Seven Days is shot beautifully. No music whatsoever to get in the way of the emotional journey, and washed out colors bring a very cold and detached feeling to the film. There is no warmth and no relief from the horrors you are witnessing. Shots are well-composed and linger just long enough to really milk the emotion out of the viewer. The acting is superb by all main characters, including the little girl. Two very big thumbs up.

My favorite horror remake

The third and final classic horror film remake on my list is my personal favorite, although not necessarily the best. The Last House on the Left remake is perhaps a better film cinematically in my belief, however, I still contend that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the best because it was much more successful and popular and appealed to a much wider audience.

This is probably going to be very long because I love this movie so much, so I apologize right now!

The Last House on the Left is another Wes Craven classic and was in fact his very first feature film. He had a very intriguing story inspired by an Ingmar Bergman film (The Virgin Spring), but perhaps not all the resources at the time to make the best adaptation of his vision. The resulting film was a shocking and violent gore-fest that put the country in a tizzy. People went absolutely nuts over this movie. It received an X rating when first sent to the ratings board and was banned in several countries for many years. Roger Ebert, however, liked the movie (yet he railed against I Spit on Your Grave - I don't get it), and over the years it has gained more credibility and admiration and is now considered a classic.

But classic or no, there was definite room for improvement on this film. Another first film by a first time director with a low budget and no-name actors. All of that turned out well, though. Some of the actors were in fact very impressive in their roles - David Hess as the leader of the gang Krug, and Lucy Grantham as Phyllis stand out the most to me. No, the biggest problem I have with the film is in terms of story.

Okay, for those that have been reading this and have no idea what this movie is that I'm talking about, here's a synopsis of the original. Two teenage girls, Mari and Phyllis, go into the big city one night to go to a concert. Trying to score some weed from a guy on the street, they end up in the clutches of a murderous little "family" of convicts. After some rape and humiliation in the woods, Phyllis is stabbed to death and Mari is shot. The convicts are left without a car and seek help at a nearby house which happens to be the house of Mari's parents. The parents discover what happened to their daughter and seek bloody revenge on the gang.

In my opinion, this basic storyline is a fantastic one to explore. However, Craven misses a few beats along the way. First of all, the scenes of rape and humiliation are interspersed with comical scenes of two bumbling sheriffs as they search for Mari, who has been reported missing by her parents. Craven has explained, and I certainly understand, his intent with these scenes - to create some uncomfortable-ness in the viewer by juxtaposing these horrific acts of brutality with an almost Three Stooges reenactment, with some wacky 70s music to go along with it. I don't think this was the best choice for the film. The second part of the film, the revenge by the parents, is completely dependent on the initial crime. It would have been so much more effective to concentrate on getting the emotion out of the audience for what happened to these girls, to make them so sad and pissed off at the people that hurt them that they will totally go along with the father taking a chainsaw to the guy who raped his daughter.

This is the main part where the remake succeeds. The story was stripped down to the basic emotional elements - here's the crime and here's the revenge. The first scene is the murderous gang busting Krug out of a police car and brutally killing the two police officers, so we immediately see how despicable these people are and just what they are capable of. The Collingwood family seems very loving, but have experienced some trauma recently from the death of a son. Mari does not die in this remake, so their revenge on her rape and attempted murder is more about protecting her and salvaging the remaining parts of their already torn family.

The other part of the film that was greatly improved upon was the scene of the discovery of Mari after her attack. In the original, Mari's dead body is found by her parents near the lake. The scene is literally less than minute long with hardly any real believable emotion by the parents over their daughters death. Boom, she's dead, next scene. They spent longer on the scene where the sheriffs get a ride from the chicken lady! The remake takes the scene much more seriously. In both films, the father, John, is a doctor but he actually gets to use his skills to try to save his daughter's life in the remake. This makes for an extremely emotional scene of him cauterizing her bullet wound, sticking a tube in her side to fixed a collapsed lung, and, as he's checking her for other injuries, discovering that she was raped.

Tony Goldwyn is fantastic in this scene, in the whole movie really. He's a talented actor that I had all but forgotten about and I'm so glad that he chose to do this movie (he was hesitant at first because of the violence). I'm still on the fence about Monica Potter in the role as the mother because at times it seemed like she almost didn't want to be there, to be in the movie, but then at times her crying and emotion was very believable. I'm not sure if it's not just her style of acting, though. She gives the same kind of awkwardness in the only other movies I recall seeing her in, Saw and Con Air. Going into the movie, I was most excited to see the actor playing Krug and if he could be as good as David Hess. Garrett Dillahunt does not disappoint as Krug. He's apparently played a bad guy before and it seems to be his forte. A mustache and beard and some black hair and totally looks the part of a bad-ass - but thankfully, not a bad-ass that you sort of like, which would have ruined the movie. He is a bad guy that you never like right from the start. He taunts the policeman in the beginning as the man is dying, he treats his son horribly, it's his decision not to let the girls go when they have a chance, he stabs Paige, he rapes Mari, and he shoots Mari. He has no respect for human life, therefore the audience has no desire to see him live. I would love to see this actor in more stuff.

I could go on and on about the directing and cinematography in the film as another way it improved on the original. I think, however, that the improvements in story were more important in the remake being about 10 times better than the original. I will say that I was incredibly impressed by the camera angles, composition, coloring, and just overall cinematography in the film. Some people look at me weird when I call this a beautiful film, but it really and truly is. There are also other things I could talk about, like responding to the controversy about the violence in the film, but that is perhaps left to another blog.