Jennifer Hills comes to Louisiana to write her next book in peace, and instead she meets a group of men who decide she deserves a lesson. That lesson turns into a nightmare of humiliation, rape and violence, and the 2010 film I Spit on Your Grave makes no effort to soften it.
Steven R. Monroe directs, working from a script by Adam Rockoff. The film stars Sarah Butler as Jennifer, Jeff Branson as Johnny Miller, Daniel Franzese as Stanley Woods, Rodney Eastman as Andy Chirensky, Chad Lindberg as Matthew Duncan, Tracey Walter as Earl, Andrew Howard as Sheriff Storch, Mollie Milligan as Mrs. Storch and Saxon Sharbino as Chastity Storch. The movie premiered at Texas Frightmare Weekend on May 1, 2010, and reached theaters on October 8, 2010, through Anchor Bay.
Trailer, via RMSMoviesandFilms.
The Cabin and Its Guests
Jennifer stops at a gas station where Johnny Miller gives her directions to her cabin. He tries to flirt with her and fails miserably. Later, Matthew Duncan, a stuttering plumber with an intellectual disability, fixes the cabin’s plumbing. Jennifer thanks him with a sudden kiss, and Matthew tells Johnny and his friends Andy and Stanley about the encounter.
Johnny’s ego is hurt after the gas station incident. He calls Jennifer “snobbish” and decides she needs teaching. That night, the four men break into the cabin to taunt and assault her. Matthew refuses to join in. Jennifer escapes into the woods and runs into Sheriff Storch and Earl, the cabin’s owner.
Storch takes Jennifer back to the cabin, but when he finds her drugs and alcohol, he questions her story. All five men gang-rape her, including Matthew, who loses his virginity despite his hesitation. Stanley records the whole attack on video.
The River and the Revenge
Afterward, a naked and humiliated Jennifer falls into the river to escape. She starts stalking her rapists to learn more about their lives. Stanley tells Andy and Johnny that his camera has been stolen, along with the videotape of their attack.
Storch intercepts a tape sent to his wife and confronts the men to find out who sent it. Johnny and Andy suspect Matthew. When they go hunting, Storch shoots and kills Earl, worried that he might be a loose end if an investigation follows Jennifer’s disappearance.
What Works and What Does Not
The film is brutal from start to finish. It earns its rating honestly, and the violence is relentless. What it does not earn is patience. The middle section drags, with long stretches of Jennifer wandering through the woods and the townspeople talking about her while she watches from afar.
The performances vary widely. Sarah Butler carries the weight of the story as Jennifer, and she makes the character’s determination believable even when the script leans on shock value. Jeff Branson plays Johnny as a petty coward, and Daniel Franzese brings his usual mix of menace and comic timing to Stanley. The rest of the cast fills out the small-town roles competently.
“The revenge of Jennifer Hills.”
The tagline sums up the whole picture. This is not a film about justice. It is a film about a woman who finds a way to answer the men who hurt her. That idea is worth something, even if the execution around it grows heavy-handed.
A Rough Film With a Clear Point
I Spit on Your Grave is not a subtle film. It knows exactly what it wants to be and rarely wavers from that path. The revenge plot is simple, and the film trusts its audience to sit through the violence to get to the payoff.
The film was made on a budget of $2 million and earned $572,809. That figure tells its own story: audiences were willing to pay to see this, even when critics were not.
The film’s sequel, I Spit on Your Grave 2, followed in 2013, and I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance Is Mine came out in 2015. The franchise shows no signs of stopping.
I Spit on Your Grave is a blunt instrument dressed up as a thriller. It knows what it is doing and does it well enough to hold attention, even when the middle sections grow slow. The final stretch lands with real force.
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