Review of I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013) by Filipeneto — 10 Oct 2020

This film is the sequel to the film “I Spit On Your Grave”, released a few years earlier as a remake of a much earlier film from the Seventies. Again, it turns out that the sequels, as usual, are significantly inferior to the initial film. In fact, this is a repetition of what we saw in the previous film, changing only the context, the cast and crew: it's the same thing, albeit in a new packaging.

In this film, we follow the young aspiring model Katie Carter. In her desire to make a career in fashion, she will need to make a better portfolio with a good photographer, but she will choose the worst possible option: kidnapped by three brothers, she is humiliated, beaten, tortured and, finally, repeatedly raped. The film is quite vile and I don't even recommend it to more sensitive adults. Children or young people are out of the question! In any case, Katie manages to survive the ordeal, revenging herself and cruelly killing the men who abused her.

For those who have never seen the film of the Seventies or the 2010 film, this will certainly be impressive for its harshness and sadism. However, for those who have seen both films, as I have seen, it's very restrained. Personally, I think that the level of crudeness and perversity reached in the Seventies remains unbeaten and this film does not bring anything that we could not see in the previous films. The rape scene is very contained, there is a lot of nudity but nothing that shocked me (the Seventies film was much more abusive at that point). The deaths are quite conventional, with the exception of the final climax, which is really violent. The director, Steven R. Monroe, did a relatively blunt job, betting everything on brutal and shocking scenes, having been unable to create a good story to build some empathy between the characters and the audience. The dialogues are truly amateur and I'm still here wondering why the hell a priest appears in the film!

The cast is made up of third-rate names or even newbies looking for an opportunity: this is the case with Jemma Dallender, the protagonist, Yavor Baharov and Aleksandar Aleksiev. There are some experienced actors like Joe Absolom, George Zlatarev, Mary Stockley and Valentine Pelka in supporting characters. The overall performance of the cast is decent enough but there are no great positive notes to highlight: on the contrary, Dallender proved to be a relatively dim and uninteresting protagonist, with whom we do not care at all.

Technically, its a film that does not stand out or have anything to present. Following on the trail of the first film, it bet everything on violent scenes, although not necessarily graphic, with good visual effects and enough fake blood to please gore fans. Not having a high budget, it used what it had. The makeup and costume work was well done but it's within what we were expecting to see. The soundtrack is virtually erased and the cinematography is amateur.