The Grouchy Editor

“A vile bag of garbage named I Spit on Your Grave is playing in Chicago theaters this weekend.  It is a movie so sick, reprehensible and contemptible that I can hardly believe it’s playing in respectable theaters.”  That’s critic Roger Ebert back in 1980, explaining the repugnance he felt for a low-budget horror film that has since gained notoriety and a cult following.

Fast-forward to October 2010.  Our man Roger finds himself reviewing yet another sexploitation movie, which he decries as a “despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave.”  Poor Roger.  He didn’t seem to learn much.  You’d think that after being so traumatized by the original, he might have known to avoid the remake.

Both Graves have the same plot, in which an attractive, “uppity” city girl named Jennifer is brutally gang-raped by country hooligans and then wreaks bloody vengeance on all of them.  As Ebert points out, the first half of the new film, with its prolonged sexual assault, is by far the more realistic part of the story.  Actress Sarah Butler (as Jennifer) is degraded in every imaginable way:  She is patted down by a leering sheriff, forced to fellate a bottle, has a gun barrel poked against her crotch, is anally raped, and then raped again.  Butler is shown nude during the assaults and again as she wanders dazedly through the woods.  Director Steven R. Monroe’s camera eschews modesty in favor of gratuitousness, focusing on Butler’s small breasts, bare buttocks and, in at least one fleeting close-up, her pudendum.

When it is time for Jennifer’s revenge scenes, however, Monroe preserves the male actors’ dignity.  There isn’t much nudity from the men – not even during a scene in which Jennifer uses hedge clippers to castrate one of them.  These scenes are standard gore-movie stuff, and the audience will be thinking of plaster, putty, and fake blood – certainly not about social statements.  Jennifer is not so much an empowered feminist as she is a credibility-stretching psychopath.  The frail-looking girl manages to physically overpower all of the beefy young men, and then devise Rube Goldberg-like contraptions to torture and dispatch them.

How does all of this compare to the infamous original film?  The first one was so cheap and so poorly acted (excepting Camille Keaton, who played Jennifer) that it was almost like watching a home movie.  In a way, that rawness made it even more disturbing.  The new film has much better production values, acting, and direction.  Otherwise, they are basically the same story.

Neither movie is what I’d call “horror.”  They are both fetish films, designed for people who enjoy seeing their rape fantasies enacted on screen.  Jennifer’s revenge scenes are simply an attempt to fend off social-minded critics like Roger Ebert.         Grade:  C+

Director:  Steven R. Monroe  Cast:  Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Andrew Howard, Daniel Franzese, Rodney Eastman, Chad Lindberg, Tracey Walter, Mollie Milligan, Saxon Sharbino  Release:  2010

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This is a difficult film to review.  The problem is my over-familiarity with the source material, both the original Swedish film, which has become an instant classic, and the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist.  I’ve seen Let the Right One In several times, and last year I read the novel.  So my exposure to the story is extensive, recent, and – annoyingly – a hindrance to enjoying the Hollywood makeover.

Matt Reeves’s American remake immediately had two strikes against it:  “How dare Reeves mess with what is already a flawless movie?” screamed fans of the Scandinavian film.  Chipped in everyone else:  How would Reeves screw up a great story with an inevitable “Americanization”?  Compounding these issues was the fact that Lindqvist’s tale is essentially a love story about two children – definitely not the standard-issue horror film marketers led us believe – making the box-office potential of the remake less than promising.

Alas, Let Me In was not a financial success last year, which is too bad, because it’s a lot better than I expected it to be.  The power of the remake does not depend on special effects, or even direction, but on the performances by its two young leads.  In this regard, Let Me In works.  The best scenes are not the vampire attacks, but the tender, low-key interaction between Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz.  They are expressive actors, and they make you care about their characters.  If I had to compare (apparently I want to), I’d say Smit-McPhee is slightly better than Kare Hedebrant, his Swedish counterpart who played Oskar (“Owen” in the remake), but Moretz doesn’t quite live up to the gold standard, Lena Leandersson’s unforgettable portrayal of Eli (“Abby”).

But the kids are more than all right, and so is the film.  Let Me In doesn’t dumb down anything for its American audience, it is faithful to its source material, and it takes its time telling a mesmerizing tale.  Unfortunately, that’s usually a recipe for box-office poison.  I liked it very much but, dammit, I think I would have liked it even more if I weren’t so familiar with the story.      Grade:  B+       

Director:  Matt Reeves  Cast:  Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Cara Buono, Elias Koteas, Sasha Barrese, Dylan Kenin, Chris Browning, Ritchie Coster  Release:  2010

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If there’s a lesson to be learned from James Franco’s grueling ordeal in 127 Hours, my guess is that the wrong people will learn it.  By now, most people know the story of young Aron Ralston, the climber who became trapped in a Utah canyon and was forced to amputate his own arm.  Ralston, who failed to alert anyone to his whereabouts, spent five miserable days in a hellish hole before, essentially, rescuing himself.  The moral of the story seems to be:  No matter how tough (and young) you think you are, at some point you’ll need other people.  (A second lesson is obvious:  Don’t mess with Mother Nature.)

Believe it or not, I used to be a young man, even more foolish than I am now.  So I’m guessing the reaction from today’s young men to this film will fall into one of two camps:  1) Wow, I guess I’d better not try to be so much like Superman – I really do need friends and family, or 2) That Ralston dude was a wimp.  I’m going out climbing tomorrow, and I ain’t tellin’ nobody!

British director Danny Boyle, whom I think is better suited to fast-paced material (Trainspotting and 28 Days Later come to mind), is constrained here to one actor and one setting.  He tries to overcome this potential handicap with a series of low-impact flashbacks and hallucinations whilst his hero is trapped.  These predictable techniques are only mildly effective.  The audience doesn’t have much emotional stake in Ralston’s life, unlike the connection we felt for Tom Hanks’s marooned executive in Cast Away.

Franco is personable and entertaining as the focus of nearly every scene (somewhere, Ryan Reynolds – similarly entombed in last year’s Buried – is scratching his head and wondering what became of his Oscar nomination), but he can only do so much.

As for the famous amputation scene, it’s gorier than I was led to believe, but I was more affected when Hanks had to extract his own tooth in Cast Away.     Grade:  B 

Director:  Danny Boyle  Cast:  James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Sean Bott, Treat Williams, Kate Burton, Clemence Poesy, Koleman Stinger, John Lawrence, Rebecca C. Olson  Release:  2010

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