BLAIR WITCH (US - 2016) Directed by Adam Wingard. Written by Simon Barrett. Cast: James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Brandon Scott, Valorie Curry, Corbin Reid, Wes Robinson. (R, 89 mins) Shot in secrecy as THE WOODS, complete with a trailer and promotional materials under that title until it was revealed to be a sequel to/reboot of 1999's THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT at this past summer's Comic Con, BLAIR WITCH goes the route of the third EXORCIST and HIGHLANDER installments and pretends the second film, 2000's much-maligned BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2, never happened. You'll be just as eager to pretend BLAIR WITCH never happened by the time it's all over, as the cult/horror team of director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett pretty much faceplant despite their significant cred as "genre remixers" with the terrific YOU'RE NEXT (2013) and THE GUEST (2014). BLAIR WITCH '16 adds some modern elements not possible in Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's trailblazing original (they get courtesy executive producer credits here), like earpiece cameras with GPS tracking and a camera drone capable of flying over the woods and surveying the area, but once the cast is stranded in the forest, the GPS is useless and the camera drone becomes a non-factor after it gets stuck in a tree. "Stuck" would be a way to describe Wingard and Barrett here, as the pair are unable to do much with the story that wasn't already accomplished 17 years ago. There's jump scares and some unsettling imagery, but by the film's midpoint, it seems the only option left is to turn it into a de facto remake of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, which established and mainstreamed the "found footage" genre 20 years after Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and a decade before PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, still holds up nearly 20 years after becoming a cultural phenomenon, though subsequent viewings never quite pack the punch of the first experience. BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2, directed by PARADISE LOST documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger, was an ambitious but rushed and compromised mess that abandoned the found footage angle and alienated fans of the first film, taking a meta approach with a group of BLAIR WITCH PROJECT superfans experiencing first-hand the kind of supernatural terror that they thought was fiction. Wingard and Barrett completely ignore the second film and center on James (James Allen McCune), who was four years old when his sister Heather (Heather Donahue in the 1999 film) vanished in the Black Hills Forest in Burkittsville, MD 20 years earlier, the discovered footage of her and two colleagues becoming the "documentary" THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Wanting closure to his sister's disappearance, James and his filmmaker friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) arrange a road trip to the Black Hills Forest after James finds some footage on YouTube of a figure in the abandoned Rustin Parr house (where the climax of PROJECT took place) that he believes is Heather, still out there after all this time. With his buddy Peter (Brandon Scott) and Peter's girlfriend Ashley (Corbin Reid) tagging along, James and Lisa head to Burkittsville and meet up with Lane (Wes Robinson) and Talia (Valorie Curry), the Blair Witch enthusiasts who posted the footage after finding some DV tapes buried in the Black Hills Forest. With Lane and Talia as guides, the group makes their way into the forest but the trip quickly unravels when the guides turn out to be charlatans, concocting the footage and also trying to scare the quartet by placing the ominous stick figures around the camp while everyone is sleeping. Angrily sending Lane and Talia on their way, James and the others soon experience everything that happened to the trio in the first film: strange sounds, violent gusts of wind attacking their tents, more stick figures and rock piles, and, in a perfect auto-critiquing metaphor, traveling an entire day and ending up circling back at the same place. You'll feel their pain.
The technological advances had some possibilities, but they aren't very well-utilized, and attempts to add new plot twists only result in confusion and a complete collapse of the story. Apparently, the Blair Witch can now control time and space, with the Black Hills Forest seemingly on another plane of existence where one person's six days can just be a few hours to another. With double the characters of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, that just means more names to yell out when people inevitably and stupidly wander off into the darkness alone to find firewood, investigate a strange sound, or to take a leak. It feels like half of the film's running time is devoted to people shouting "JAMES! PETER! LANE! LISA!" over and over and over again. And speaking of dumb decisions, these people know what happened to Heather, yet they act surprised when the same things start happening to them. And when Lane and Talia speak ominously of the Black Hills Forest, why are James and Peter snickering like assholes and derisively mocking the local yokels? They saw Heather's footage from 20 years ago, didn't they? Isn't that the reason James has dragged everyone out here? All roads lead to the abandoned Parr residence, where James plays a game of DON'T LOOK NOW with a diminutive figure running around the ramshackle hell house and Wingard and Barrett feel the need to supply an explanation as to why all of the Blair Witch victims stand in the corner and face the wall (spoiler alert: it's dumb). Was anyone really demanding another BLAIR WITCH sequel? Perhaps the filmmakers approached it with the noblest intentions of really shaking things up and putting their own unique stamp on it (YOU'RE NEXT and THE GUEST are really, really good movies that put original and enthusiastic spins on shopworn genre fare). But what's onscreen just looks like Wingard and Barrett simply gave up after introducing some potentially interesting ideas (like James' almost fatalistic, VANISHING-type need to know what happened to Heather) and doing nothing with them. I'm not saying it's on the bottom-feeding level of the pointless Eli Roth-produced 2016 remake of Eli Roth's 2003 debut CABIN FEVER, but BLAIR WITCH '16's second half is so slavishly devoted to recycling the events of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT that it ends up looking like a lazy, cynical, bigger-budgeted cash grab. It has a nicely eerie, ambient score by Wingard himself, but ultimately, its biggest accomplishment may be establishing some retroactive appreciation for what Joe Berlinger was trying to do with BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2. Somehow, I'm guessing that's not what Wingard and Barrett had in mind.
The terrific YOU'RE NEXT (2013) earned some significant critical acclaim even outside the usual insulated and self-congratulatory horror circles and showed that indie filmmaker Adam Wingard and screenwriting partner Simon Barrett were ready to take things to the next level. The film didn't do very well commercially as mainstream audiences were perhaps a bit fatigued with home-invasion thrillers, but it's found a major cult following on DVD and Netflix streaming. Wingard and Barrett are part of the horror hipster collective that also includes their buddies and V/H/S franchise collaborators Joe Swanberg and Ti West (Wingard and Barrett starred in the horribly self-indulgent 24 EXPOSURES, a recent film by the prolific Swanberg. who also co-starred in YOU'RE NEXT), but as with YOU'RE NEXT, THE GUEST demonstrates that Wingard and Barrett are just as skillfully adept at making smart and entertaining thriller as they are the would-be auteurist circle-jerk home movies they get roped into by their friends. THE GUEST had an even tougher time in theaters than YOU'RE NEXT when distributor Picturehouse--a relaunch of the short-lived '00s indie distributor--cancelled their plans to roll it out nationwide (it was their only 2014 release) and instead halted THE GUEST's run on a mere 53 screens at its widest release for a gross of just $330,000. It deserved better and it's another one of those films that, had it been released ten years ago, would've easily become a huge word-of-mouth sleeper hit and likely launched the big-screen career of former DOWNTON ABBEY co-star Dan Stevens.
Sporting a flawless American accent, the British Stevens (also seen recently opposite Liam Neeson in the underrated A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES) is David, recently discharged from the military and paying a visit to the mourning family of his fallen friend Caleb. Caleb's family--mom Laura (Sheila Kelley), dad Spencer (Leland Orser), 20-year-old sister Anna (Maika Monroe), and teenage brother Luke (Brendan Meyer)--are dealing with his death in their own ways when David arrives to grant Caleb's final wish to tell each of them that he loved them very much. Touched by the extent of David's respect for their son by following through on his promise to honor Caleb's request, Laura and Spencer invite him to stay with them as long as he needs. David repays their kindness by helping out with some problems, whether it's handling some bullies making Luke's life hell, kicking some troublemakers out of a party thrown by Anna's friends, or just being a calming, comforting presence in a home fraught with tension. But something seems off about David, even with his story seemingly checking out and his being clearly visible in one of Laura's photos of Caleb's Special Forces unit in Iraq. To say any more about where the story heads would spoil the surprises THE GUEST has to offer (I haven't even mentioned the involvement of character actor Lance Reddick and an almost unrecognizable Ethan Embry), but with its twisty plot that expertly balances dark comedy and odd bits of humor (note the GENERAL HOSPITAL references in the family names) with grim and shocking dramatic turns, its unexpected character development (Brittany Murphy lookalike Monroe is quite good at playing Anna's very believable maturation from one who is disaffected and can't even to being the first to see through David's ruse and attempt to do something about it), and its killer John Carpenter-esque score by Steve Moore (one half of American synth-rock duo Zombi), it's one of the most giddily entertaining genre pieces in ages, and with the exception of THE IMMIGRANT, perhaps the best film of 2014 that nobody saw. Best of all is Stevens, whose brilliant performance brings to mind the smiling sincerity masking the tightly-coiled, ticking time-bomb menace that Terry O'Quinn brought to the 1987 classic THE STEPFATHER. Wingard admirably wastes absolutely no time in getting THE GUEST off and running, and it rapidly unfolds with all the appeal of a catchy song that's immediately got you hooked. This one should've been big, but like YOU'RE NEXT, it had to wait to be discovered. (R, 100 mins)
FALCON RISING (US/Germany - 2014)
The busy Michael Jai White divides his time between DTV actioners and the Tyler Perry universe, starring in the Perry-produced WHY DID I GET MARRIED? TV spinoff FOR BETTER OR WORSE, a show that started on TBS but is now about to air its sixth season on OWN. For many years, White was best known for the title roles in the HBO movie TYSON (1995) and the big-screen SPAWN (1997), but his place in pop culture history would eventually be cemented by the 2009 cult classic BLACK DYNAMITE, a dead-on, labor-of-love spoof of blaxploitation films that White also wrote and shepherded every step of the way to its completion. BLACK DYNAMITE only received a limited theatrical release, but it's gone on to become one of the most revered and quotable comedies--at least with hardcore movie nerds--of the last several years, and in that sense, it's surprising that White, who's absolutely perfect as Black Dynamite, hasn't gone on to bigger things. White's no stranger to the world of DTV action, and his films have generally been a cut above the norm, whether he's working for Isaac Florentine in UNDISPUTED II: LAST MAN STANDING (2006), headlining the bone-crushing and bloody BLOOD AND BONE (2009), or directing himself in NEVER BACK DOWN 2: THE BEATDOWN (2011). Like Florentine--another DTV action figure who should theoretically be getting better mainstream offers--it may just be that White prefers the relative freedom that the world of low-budget action allows. Florentine is one of the producers of White's latest, FALCON RISING, which actually made it into a few theaters in September courtesy of Freestyle Releasing. It's the tentative beginning to what producers Shahar & Etchie Stroh of Moonstone Entertainment have christened the "Codename: Falcon" franchise, with White as former Marine-turned-government Black Ops agent John "Falcon" Chapman.
As FALCON RISING opens, a suicidal Chapman, haunted by his Iraq War memories, is playing Russian Roulette before heading to the liquor store, where he of course thwarts a robbery. When his humanitarian aid worker sister Cindy (Laila Ali, Muhammad's youngest daughter) is brutally beaten and left for dead in the "Favela" slums of Rio, Chapman heads to the Rio de Janeiro capital where his old war buddy Manny (Neal McDonough) conveniently runs the US Consulate. It seems Cindy was working to stop a human trafficking and child prostitution ring and got the attention of Rio's most corrupt cops and an evil crew of yakuza planning to ship underage girls to Japan. When an yakuza hit woman disguised as a nurse tries to kill a comatose Cindy, Chapman goes full One Man Wrecking Crew to take out the trash in the Favela. Director Ernie Barbarash is a DTV action veteran (CUBE ZERO, ASSASSINATION GAMES), not on the level of a Florentine or a John Hyams, but FALCON RISING (shot under the far less catchy title FAVELA) shows he's getting a little better. There's an enjoyable Cannon vibe to much of FALCON RISING, right down to its 101-minute run time, and it's really just one action movie cliche after another: PTSD-stricken Chapman's death wish, the Rio cop in charge of the case (Jimmy Navarro, looking and acting like his character should be named "Brazilem Dafoe") obviously being a villain, and the inevitable climactic shootout/MMA throwdown at a shipyard warehouse. There's nothing here you haven't seen before: the villains are complete cardboard cutouts; a sequence where Chapman issues a beatdown on a suspicious-looking guy who turns out to be a complete red herring who never bothers to introduce or explain himself until he and five of his buddies have been decked senseless is unbelievably dumb; a subplot about cleaning up the Favela owes a bit too much to THE RAID; and former boxer Ali has nothing to do but lie motionless in a hospital bed (and she gets an "introducing" credit despite IMDb showing 12 prior acting credits dating back to 2000), but FALCON RISING works as brainlessly diverting action fare. White is an engaging and stoical hero, there's some nice bantering with McDonough (shockingly not cast as a smug prick), who quips "I see you stopped working out" when he first sees the hulking Chapman at the Consulate, the fight choreography by Larnell Stovall is top-notch, and Barbarash and cinematographer Yaron Levy do a fine job of passing Puerto Rico off as Rio and making FALCON RISING look a bit bigger-budgeted than it really is (though you could make a drinking game out of how many times Barbarash cuts to swirling, second-unit aerial shots of the Christ the Redeemer statue). It's hard telling if FALCON RISING will actually lead to a franchise, but it's got plenty of action and no shortage of a perpetually scowling White beating the shit out of people, so what more do you need? (R, 101 mins, also streaming on Netflix Instant) I ORIGINS (US - 2014)
(Some SPOILERS ahead). The 2011 Sundance hit ANOTHER EARTH, directed by Mike Cahill and written by star Brit Marling, was one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking indie sci-fi films to come down the pike since PRIMER introduced the world to Shane Carruth. While Marling wrote and starred in the interesting SOUND OF MY VOICE and the disastrous THE EAST for their director pal Zal Batmanglij, Cahill was busy writing his follow-up film I ORIGINS. Marling is just an actress in this one, but it has that distinct feel that she usually brings to her projects. However, the film is ultimately a disappoint that never recovers from the glacially-paced mumblecore moping of its first half and it eventually succumbs to silliness despite an interesting premise once the narrative finally starts advancing. Opening in 2006, molecular biology Ph.D. candidate Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), his roommate Kenny (THE WALKING DEAD's Steven Yeun), and their frumpy research assistant Karen (Marling) are studying the evolution of the human eye in an effort to dismantle the notion of intelligent design and creationism. Ian meets Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) at a party and the two begin a whirlwind romance that comes to an abrupt end when Sofi is killed in an elevator accident. Cut to 2013, as the now-Dr. Gray and his research partner/wife Karen are told their infant son displays signs of autism. They're suspicious of the tests given to the baby and, through some plot advancement that the audience is just forced to roll with, discover that their son's iris pattern is identical to that of a man who died two years earlier, and the photos which provoked an emotional response from the baby during the test were images from that dead man's past. Making this their new mission--apparently with the plan of cutting the autism specialist (Cara Seymour) out entirely--Ian jets off to New Delhi when an eye-scan database indicates that a child with Sofi's iris pattern was there as recently as three months earlier.
Cahill tries to go for some heady ideas involving reincarnation, religion, and scientific theory, but too much of I ORIGINS is a laborious, pretentious bore. The courtship scenes between Ian and Sofi go on forever, with the two demonstrating the kind of odd, eccentric behavior that only goes over well at film festivals (their meet-cute is particularly absurd), and the performances of Pitt and Berges-Frisbey respectively channeling the most grating aspects of circa-2000 Jeremy Davies and circa-anytime Paz de la Huerta. The first 50 minutes are a slog, but if you can hang with it, it gets marginally better--for a while, at least--as Cahill gets a decent Shane Carruth forward momentum going and actually takes the concept somewhere. But it's ultimately a lot of talk on the way to nowhere special and not really worth the effort. There's still a lot of lingering questions, William Mapother's one-scene appearance as an American minister in Ian's New Delhi hotel seems to be what's left of a larger role that got hacked down in post, and a post-credits stinger tries to go for a big surprise but is just hokey and laughable. There's some nice cinematography, particularly in the New Delhi sequences, but Cahill's follow-up to the far-superior ANOTHER EARTH is, for the most part, a dull, draggy misfire, and though Marling is only in front of the camera, it's a good indication along with THE EAST that maybe the Marling/Cahill/Batmanglij team have said everything they've had to say. (R, 107 mins)
Indie filmmakers Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, and Ti West form the core of a relentlessly busy crew of DIY mumblecore filmmakers who took part in the V/H/S anthology and have received acclaim mostly in indie hipster circles but seemed poised to break into the mainstream with the terrific 2013 slasher film YOU'RE NEXT, directed by Wingard, written by Barrett, and co-starring Swanberg and West. West, who had some acclaim away from this posse with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and the overrated THE INNKEEPERS, also directed Swanberg in the current THE SACRAMENT. Swanberg wrote and directed 24 EXPOSURES, which stars Wingard and looks like what might happen if West teamed up with Henry Jaglom to make a slow-burn re-imagining of the 1983 cult slasher film DOUBLE EXPOSURE. 24 EXPOSURES is obviously a film shot cheaply and quickly. It's as minimalist as can be, with some really bad acting and a score that vacillates between "1980s John Carpenter" and "Skinemax fuck scene." Wingard is "fetish photographer" Billy Wingard, who specializes in graphic still death shots of staged murders. Helping him is assistant/girlfriend Alex (Caroline White), who's open enough to allow model Callie (Sophia Takal) to join them in bed. Billy is also preoccupied with Callie's friend Rebecca (Helen Rogers), whose possessive boyfriend (Mike Brune) doesn't want her taking part in his photo sessions. Meanwhile, down-in-the-dumps and improbably-named detective Michael Bamfeaux (Barrett) is given the boot by his wife but still has to do his job, which involves investigating the murder of a model who never showed up for a scheduled shoot with Billy and Alex.
Starting with Wingard's character having the same surname, 24 EXPOSURES is meta almost to the point of self-parody. This is especially the case by the end when, after a whole lot of very little has happened, Bamfeaux, moonlighting as an aspiring writer, turns his search for the murderer and his friendship with Billy into a memoir as a literary agent (played by Swanberg) goes through a laundry list of his manuscript's flaws, go-nowhere plot details, and general construction weaknesses and rattles off ways to improve it, almost like Swanberg is stopping to critique his own film, still in progress. It's that kind of nonsense that shows he's more interested in being "clever" than constructing a real story. Some parts of 24 EXPOSURES look almost Tommy Wiseau-like in their sub-softcore-porn production value. You'd think for as long as Wingard and Barrett have been friends, they could at least convincingly play friends in a movie (Barrett, in particular, is awful). But this is the kind of film where the sense of amateurish artifice is intended and the bad performances are by design, but to what end? Other than Swanberg drawing facile parallels between Billy and Bamfeaux by showing them both eating dry cereal as a snack, there's no real attempt at character or thematic depth. 24 EXPOSURES is a tediously self-indulgent home movie made by guys who should know and have done better. It's either an inside joke among their clique or, more likely, an excuse for Swanberg and Wingard to hang out with some naked chicks on set. (Unrated, 77 mins)
ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (US - 2013)
When it debuted at 2013's Sundance Film Festival, it seemed highly unlikely that ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW would ever be seen again afterwards. With an inheritance from his grandparents providing the budget, writer/director Randy Moore and his cast and crew pulled off one of the most audacious and ambitious guerrilla filmmaking stunts in the annals of cinema: with season passes to both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, they shot the bulk of the black & white film inside the parks, using scripts stored on their phones and armed with handheld (or concealed) cameras and sporting wardrobes that made them look like average tourists. Moore said in interviews that as many times as they went back to the parks and as many times as the actors got on the rides (he reportedly had the four main actors ride It's a Small World 12 times in a row until he got the shots he needed), none of the Disney cast members got wise to what they were doing. Much to the surprise of Moore and everyone else, Disney, fiercely protective of its image and its intellectual property, never attempted to block the film's release and never publicly addressed it, though it has been added to the online supplement to Disney A to Z: The Official Encyclopedia.
On the last day of a family vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida, Jim (Roy Abramsohn) gets a call from his boss telling him that he's been fired. Jim keeps this devastating news to himself and focuses on giving wife Emily (Elena Schuber) and kids Elliott (Jack Dalton) and Sara (Katelynn Rodriguez) one last fun day before going home. It's a day that becomes increasingly surreal as every song, every attraction, and every animatronic character becomes more sinister and nightmarish by the minute. And that's on top of the everyday horrors of a nagging wife, screaming kids, rude or constantly coughing patrons, lines that won't move, and Elliott getting sick on Space Mountain. Jim is also bewitched by two seductive, giggling French teenage girls (Danielle Safady, Annet Mehendru) who turn up everywhere before he starts deliberately following them. It's clear early on that Jim's current level of reality might not actually be, and the completely off-the-rails second half becomes a horrifically dystopian version of the Disney experience, fusing elements of TOTAL RECALL and VIDEODROME, with a cat-flu epidemic, turkey legs made of emu, rollercoaster decapitations, a secret crew of cleaners, and Disney princesses who double as high-priced courtesans for wealthy Asian businessmen. By the end, it's basically an elaborate TWILIGHT ZONE episode and would probably work better as such, but Moore's daring filmmaking process and his ability to make do with what he had--a lot of the shots are composed as such to avoid copyright infringements and being discovered--are very impressive. Regardless of how the film even turned out, it's a major accomplishment that he was able to get it done. As a story, it loses its way a bit and seems to drag even at 90 minutes, but as an exercise in DIY filmmaking, it's not to be missed. (Unrated, 90 mins)
This bigger-budgeted sequel to last year's overrated horror anthology V/H/S is pretty much along the same lines: some memorable and inspired moments mixed with some groaners. Overall, it's slightly more satisfying than its predecessor, attempting to stick with what worked the first time around but not always exhibiting an ability to follow through. YOU'RE NEXT screenwriter Simon Barrett handles the wraparound segment, with a private eye team (Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott) searching for a missing college student and finding his stash of mysterious VHS tapes--Levine checks out the house while Abbott watches the videos. First up is "Phase 1: Clinical Trials," written by Barrett and directed by and starring YOU'RE NEXT helmer Adam Wingard, who gets an experimental camera eye after a car accident and starts seeing ghostly figures lurking around his house. Next is "A Ride in the Park," co-directed by Eduardo Sanchez (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), where a guy attaches a camera to his helmet before heading out on a bike trail, only to be bitten by a zombie and end up allowing us a first-person, hand-held view of a zombie outbreak. It's as tired and played out as it sounds. Things pick up--for a while, at least--with "Safe Haven," co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, who brings the same level of intensity demonstrated by his breakout hit THE RAID: REDEMPTION, as a team of documentary filmmakers get more than they anticipated when they're granted access to a compound to interview the leader of an Indonesian cult called Paradise Gate. It's a slow-burner (and, at nearly 35 minutes, the longest of the stories) and Evans really ratchets up the intensity, but it completely falls apart when it devolves into--yes, you knew it was coming--yet another zombie apocalypse tale. Like any good horror anthology, V/H/S/2 has the sense to finish big, and the highlight is "Slumber Party Alien Abduction," directed by Jason Eisener, who made the unwatchable HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN but contributed one of the stronger segments to another recent horror omnibus, THE ABCs OF DEATH. A teenage girl and her younger brother have some friends over while their parents are away for the weekend, and in between playing increasingly cruel pranks on each other, find themselves under attack by some aggressively violent aliens of the Whitley Strieber variety.
Of course, the wraparound segment reveals a supernatural element to the VHS tapes, but I again ask "Why the VHS angle?" It's just lazy pandering to the hipster horror crowd that has no bearing on the stories. Horror fans have really embraced these things and this one in particular seemed to get a lot of glowing reviews, even from critics outside the insulated horror scene. Wingard and Barrett were among the numerous producers, and call me a party-pooper, but I think you're better off waiting for their very impressive YOU'RE NEXT--one of the year's best films and one that you probably missed in theaters--to hit Blu-ray in a couple of months. (Unrated, 96 mins)
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 (US - 2013)
This "sequel" to the 2010 remake of the 1978 cult classic is really just another remake. The same director (Steven R. Monroe) is onboard and essentially moves the action to Sofia, Bulgaria, and the only real surprise is that Avi Lerner isn't involved (though he does get a special thanks in the closing credits, because he has to be pretty much running Sofia by this point). I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 follows the same rape/revenge template, with a little more time unfortunately spent on the rape portion than in Monroe's 2010 film. Katie (Jemma Dallender) is a wide-eyed, naïve Midwestern farm girl trying to make it as a NYC model. She answers an ad for a free photo session and rejects the Eastern European-accented photo crew's demands that she pose nude. The next night, one of them, the dim-witted Georgy (Yavar Baharoff) breaks into her apartment, rapes her, and kills her nice-guy super. Georgy calls his brothers--photographer Ivan (Joe Absolom) and Nicolay (Aleksander Aleksiev)--who drug Katie and smuggle her to their hometown of Sofia, where they keep her chained in a basement and spend days raping her, torturing her, and pissing on her. She manages to escape and a sympathetic detective (George Zlatarev) turns her over to Ana (Mary Stockley), who runs a womens shelter. Of course, unbeknownst to the dumb cop, Ana is actually in cahoots with the Bulgarian sickos (I think she's both mother and older sister to Georgy and Nicolay) and takes Katie right back to the torture room where the "father," the hulking Valko (Peter Silverleaf) beats her and violates her with an electric cattle prod before raping her. They dig a hole in the basement and bury her alive, but the brothers are too stupid to realize that the building is over a tunnel, so she manages to escape and plot her revenge, which includes such highlights as slicing flesh open, tearing off nipples, drowning one in a shit-filled toilet, and putting another's testicles in a vise.
Is there a reason for this film to exist? Monroe's 2010 remake was, surprisingly, not bad. While it borrowed liberally from SAW and other torture-porn offshoots, it was well-made, didn't spend nearly as much time on the unpleasant rape sequences as Meir Zarchi's 1978 original, and had a visceral, powerful performance by Sarah Butler as the victim-turned-avenger. Dallender is an incredibly cute young woman who's very charming in the introductory scenes (she looks like a girl-next-door version of Asia Argento) and handles herself well in the brutal (and brutally long) rape segments, but doesn't quite have the chops for the revenge half of the film. She does little more than open her eyes really wide and make exaggerated faces, while quipping things like "Some guys like it tight!" as she cranks the vise on one rapist's nutsack. Boasting a bloated run time of 106 minutes, this is pure B-movie exploitation and a story that shouldn't take more than 80 minutes to tell, but Monroe prolongs the rape sequences so much that it's over an hour into the film before Katie even starts plotting her vengeance, which is really what the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE crowd wants to see. I went into Monroe's 2010 remake with extraordinarily low expectations and was surprised at how compelling it proved to be at times. That led me to approach this with a "Well, hey, the last one wasn't too bad..." mentality and found it a dull, depressing bore, with obvious foreshadowing (Katie showing her super how to create a foolproof rat trap), tired clichés (a single tear rolling down Ana's cheek as she clutches a doll and blasts an opera record to drown out Katie's screams from below), and bad acting. One of the few things Monroe gets right is the location shooting in Brooklyn in the early scenes (I'm surprised they didn't just use Sofia for that as well; Avi Lerner would have), utilizing some areas that have remained largely unchanged for the last 30 years or so. It's a nice gesture and much appreciated by a fan of scuzzy, old-school NYC like myself, but when that's the best thing one can say about something called I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2, then you really shouldn't have bothered. (Unrated, 106 mins)
