Crimes:
- Leading the trend of ’70s/’80s horror remakes to rock bottom by honoring one of the era’s most abhorrent pieces of exploitation trash
- Keeping the nauseating rape-revenge plot mostly intact while glossing up the original’s roughhewn “amateur” look, which has the odd effect of cheapening a vision that was already tawdry to the extreme
- Commercializing the “revenge” part of the story by staging the deaths partly via ironic Saw-like contraptions
Defenders: Producer Lisa Hansen and director Steven R. Monroe
Tone of commentary: Informative and agreeable, almost to a fault. Monroe and Hansen get into the usual funny behind-the-scenes stories and production hassles, spread praise across the cast and crew, and address some of the misgivings fans of the original I Spit On Your Grave have about the remake. What they don’t address is their rationale for making the film in the first place, or any of the moral controversies that dogged the 1978 version and will surely carry over into this mostly faithful (in spirit, anyway) remake. On occasion, Hansen expresses misgivings about her involvement in the project, like her response to a scene where protagonist Sarah Butler is forced to fellate the business end of a pistol. (“To be shooting this film, you become a little desensitized, and then every once in a while, you have moments when you’re like ‘Holy cow, what am I doing?’”) But while Monroe talks about the emotional and physical toll of shooting the film’s drawn-out rape scenes, he doesn’t feel inclined to defend their content. He’s mostly just concerned with appeasing fans of the original, whether that means answering message-board nitpicks or pointing out shots that pay direct homage to it.