I Spit On Your Grave



 

Every man should take this into consideration; a woman is to be respected and valued the same way they would value their mother and daughter.  After all, who do you think brought you into this world to raise you and made sacrifices?  A WOMAN. So where do men go off devaluing women?  What is the need for? Where does this resentment stem from?

I Spit On Your Grave illustrates just that: complete disregard for women. It is a horror story about rape and the degradation of an innocent woman.  It is about empowerment with the intention to kill. Jennifer Hills has a cutesy contagious yet vulnerable charm to her which possesses Johnny and his puppets to violate and gang rape her in a way that is brutal, degrading, and just cruel beyond belief.  And what exactly possesses a man to objectify and violate a woman in this evil regard?  If you are a Criminal Psychology major, you may need to take notes.  Because rape is not a crime of passion.  It is a crime of hate.  And this movie is about a hate towards a woman.

Johnny was a hard working gas station attendant who was "happily" married with children of his own.  Stanley and Andy were a bunch of leeches with no aim in life. And then you have Matthew who is delayed and gets pushed around by the others. He is the only one who takes a real fond liking to Jennifer with no harm intended. Of course because Johnny and the others are very well aware of this, they take turns raping Jennifer and rendering her helpless for Matthew so he can finally lose his virginity.  He of course is so hesitant to do this but is coerced himself into doing it.  In a way, both Matthew and Jennifer are raped together. Eventually Jennifer is left for dead. Matthew is ordered to go back to the cabin to kill her but cannot bring himself to do it. He lets the boys think he did but as few weeks go by, they see her lurking by the lake, very far from dead.  Poor Matthew gets the shit beaten out of him for lying and is told to never come back.

Now most rapists deny that a rape ever took place.  To them they feel they were teased, taunted and provoked.  In their mind it is a crime of passion.  There is a sick and convoluted excitement involved when a man is in complete control of a woman who is entirely at his mercy.  And for the woman, her respect is broken.  And when a woman's value and respect is lost, so is her voice of reason.  In Jennifer Hill's case, she never lost her voice of reason however.  That voice told her to seek retribution. That voice told her to kill them all. But what possesses a man to commit a brutal rape?  Hatred towards his mother? Fear of rejection?  Loss of control?  Peer pressure? Or just extremely high testosterone? 

And Jennifer did kill them all. One by one.  But what was the horror behind her intentions?  The answer is quite simple; when a human being is pushed to their breaking point, their inner demon takes complete control and guides them.  Is it safe to say that we all may have a demon in ourselves?  Possibly.  After the shock, came the trauma.  After the trauma of being beaten and violated to a bloody pulp, Jennifer changed.  She was devoid of mercy.  She didn't even harbor any mercy towards Matthew who was developmentally disabled and was a victim himself. She used his innocent school boy crush to her advantage by seducing him into strangulation. Jennifer Hills became a destructive force of retribution.  Reverse psychology would be to make them feel what she felt when they degraded her to nothing.  I want you to feel my pain.  How do you like it now? How does it feel being reduced to nothing?   

The scenario and Jennifer's state of mind is very three dimensional, consisting of right, wrong, and justified.  Rape is wrong and to murder your rapist is right because it's your right to defend yourself, but wrong because it is murder.  It justifies itself.  Watching Jennifer's agony makes it hard not to be open minded about this.  But to be open minded about the victim, we must be open minded about the suspect.  What did Johnny say to Jennifer during their re-encounter where she held him at gunpoint?   "I don't like women giving me orders". It is apparent that Johnny has issues with being in control.  The gun that Jennifer pointed at him represents power that he has to now contend with.  Johnny does not like his power and control taken away from him because if you think about it, he seems to be in most control over everybody in his life; his wife that he is unfaithful to yet turns a blind eye to his indiscretions, Stanley and Andy, who don't even make a living unlike Johnny, Matthew, which goes without saying, and now Jennifer.  To Johnny, it's all a power trip to him.  He convinces Jennifer that she is responsible for the rapes because she was wearing sexy clothing revealing her legs. What is a man to do right?  A man can only blame his testosterone for so long.  Jennifer uses his moment of admission to lure him back to the cottage for an "intimate" bath, where she severs his manhood leaving him to bleed to death.  Johnny's power is all gone now. Just as Jennifer's once was. Stanley and Andy followed shortly when they were brutally slaughtered in the lake. Now everything that has ever been attached to Johnny aside from his genitals, that he ever had control over is gone. 

The tagline says it best; There is no jury in the world that would convict Jennifer Hills.