I Spit on Your Grave is a 2010 American rape-and-revenge horror film and a remake of the controversial 1978 cult film of the same name (originally known as Day of the Woman). It was directed by Steven R. Monroe, and stars Sarah Butler, Chad Lindberg, Daniel Franzese, Rodney Eastman, Jeff Branson, and Andrew Howard.

I have heard of this movie, both the original & the remake, for quite a while but I had no intention of watching it. I don’t like movies that depict rape and dwell on it and can take some torture movies but too much of it is really hard for me to take. I finally watched this one today, and it is tough to sit through without me feeling disgusted about men who gang up and physically hurt & rape women. It is also tough not to feel empathetic towards the victim in this case and cheer her on when she gets her revenge in thoroughly brutal yet innovative ways.

Jennifer Hills is a writer who moves to a remote cabin in the woods of Louisiana from NYC to write her next novel. At a gas station, Johnny who runs the place, tries to flirt with her but awkwardly gets rejected in front of his two friends Andy and Stanley. Jennifer settles in the cabin writing her novel, drinking wine and smoking marijuana. When she has plumbing problems, the caretaker sends Matthew, a stuttering plumber who has social anxiety and possibly other mental issues. After he finishes the work, Jennifer impulsively gives him a kiss of gratitude and he runs out before she can pay him. Matthew then tells Johnny and his friends Andy and Stanley about his visit. Johnny, whose ego was bruised after the gas station incident, decide that Jennifer is snobbish and needs to be “taught a lesson”.

At night the four men enter the cabin and taunt Jennifer making her do lewd acts to a gun. She manages to escape into the woods and runs into sheriff  Storch and Earl, the owner of the cabin she is renting. Storch tells Earl to go back home and leads Jennifer back to the cabin but when he finds her drugs and alcohol, he assaults her too. They make Matthew rape her first before they all take turns out in the woods, with Stanley recording it. A naked and injured Jennifer walks and falls into the river and after a brief search the men think she drowned. Jennifer though is still alive and recovers days later and comes back to the town. She stalks the men from afar and steals the tape from Stanley’s camera.

Storch finds the tape sent to his wife and confronts the other men about it. Johnny is taunted by dead birds thrown at his window and Matthew returns to the cabin where she is strangled by Jennifer as he tries to apologize. She next captures Stanley in a bear trap, smears fish guts in his face, then uses his camera to record crows pecking out his eyes. Jennifer then drowns Andy and burns his face horribly in a lye bathtub. Next, she uses pliers to pull out Johnny’s teeth and a pair of garden shears to cut off his penis, leaving him to bleed to death. She then pretends to be a new teacher for Storch’s daughter’s advanced education program and takes her to the school prak.

Storch finds out and rushes to the park but is attacked by Jennifer. When he wakes up, Jennifer anally rapes him with his shotgun and reminds him that she was just as innocent as his own daughter. She attaches one end of a string to the trigger and the other end to the wrist of the unconscious Matthew, who is seated in front of Storch. When Matthew wakes up, his movements trigger the shotgun, which fires a round that tears through Storch’s body and blows apart his face before hitting Matthew in the chest, leaving both men dead. As she hears the sound, Jennifer smiles.

Brutal  Rape isn’t something that I am comfortable in watching. I can tell you that I was so uncomfortable throughout the film from the stalking, the taunting & raping of the girl. What bizarre and innovative ways to exact her revenge. That was brutal. I label this horror and horrific. But dare I say it I got a certain satisfaction when seeing the main character getting her revenge. As a movie…..7 outta 10!

Hereditary is a 2018 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Ari Aster, in his feature directorial debut. It stars Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro and Gabriel Byrne as a family haunted after the death of their secretive grandmother.

Annie’s estranged mother, Ellen, who has been living with Annie and her family in their house, dies. At the funeral 13-year-old daughter, Charlie, draws her grandmother lying in her coffin, which is disapproved off by her father Steve. Following the funeral, Charlie begins to exhibit strange behavior, asking her mother who will take care of her now that her grandmother is gone. A disturbing fact is revealed when Annie says that Charlie was her mother’s favourite and even breastfed her! Annie sees an apparition of Ellen in her workshop but it disappears when she switched on the light.

Annie also attends a support group to talk about her mother’s death and her family’s history with mental illness. Peter is forced to take Charlie with him when he lies about going to a late evening school event, which is actually a party. While he is smoking pot, Charlie eats some chocolate cake which has nuts in it. Allergic to nuts, she suffers from a angioedema attack and Peter rushes her to a hospital. Charlie however opens a window to stick her head out and breath more easily and is decapitated when Peter sveres to avoid hitting a dear and Charlie’s head hits a telephone pole. Peter is stunned and goes home and lies in bed and Annie finds her daughter’s severed head in the car and screams.

Annie is befriended by Joan, a fellow support group member who says she lost her son & grandson and eventually she goes to Joan’s home for a talk. Annie starts to have violent nightmares while sleepwalking. At dinner that night, Annie explodes at Peter, revealing her harbored resentment and blame towards him in regards to the accident, to which Peter counters by telling Annie that she was the one who convinced Charlie to go; this further stresses their relationship. Joan has Annie taken through a seance but the latter has a breakdown in between. Joan instructs Annie to perform the séance with all of her family members present and one of Charlie’s possessions, which will form a link to Charlie’s spirit during the séance. On her way back home, Annie hears the tongue clicking noise Charlie frequently made in her car.

After another nightmare in which she & Peter are killed in flames, Annie apologies to her son and asks him & Steven to take part in a seance. bjects begin to move and break, terrifying Peter, and Charlie seemingly possesses Annie until Steve douses her with water. In Joan’s apartment, lit candles line the shelves, while a picture of Peter with his eyes crossed out sits in the middle of a pentagram on Joan’s table. Peter spots Joan from across the street during lunchtime at school, who screams at Peter to get out. At her home, Annie sees Joan in several photos of her mothers and is shocked that the two knew each other. Annie discovers a book with information about a demon named Paimon, one of the eight kings of Hell who requires the body of a male host in order to achieve his full potential. Annie ventures into the attic and finds a decapitated body with strange symbols on the wall written in blood and presumes it to be Ellen’s.

At school Peter becomes possessed temporarily and knows his head on his desk until he is knocked out. Steve is called from work to pick him up from school. Once he returns home, Annie shows Steve her mother’s body and the sketchbook. Annie begs Steve to burn the sketchbook so she can sacrifice herself in order to stop the haunting, but Steve assumes she has gone mad, accusing her of desecrating Ellen’s grave herself. When Annie throws the book into the fireplace herself, Steve bursts into flames instead. Annie stares in shock and becomes possessed. Peter later wakes up at night and is chased by his mother  Annie, possessed and levitating, chases him into the attic, where Peter begs her to return to her senses.

Within the attic, Peter is met with decorations of cult imagery as well as more coven members; Annie, floating within the air, beheads herself with a piano wire as the coven members look on. Peter jumps out of the window in order to escape them. As he lies on the ground, Paimon possesses his body and he wakes up. He follows Annie’s levitating corpse into Charlie’s treehouse, where Charlie’s crowned, decapitated head rests atop a mannequin. Joan, other coven members and the headless corpses of his mother and grandmother bow to him. Joan swears an oath to him as Paimon, stating that he has been liberated from his female host, Charlie, and is free to rule over them.

Though some of the movie is a bit dull and it fails to take off for a while, I think by the end the horror kicks in and we get into some scares and atmospheric scenes. Collette’s performance is top notch and adds to the effectiveness of this movie. The movie made over $79 million on a $10 million budget to become A24’s highest-grossing film worldwide.8 outta 10.