Women in Horror: Revenge (2018)

* spoilers *

Jen is flown out to a luxurious home in a remote desert for a romantic getaway with her married boyfriend, Richard. The plan is to have a nice, sexy weekend together before his annual hunting trip with his two friends Dimitri and Stan. The first night goes as planned, but the day, the two friends arrive early and create an awkward situation since Richard wanted to keep her a secret. They party together that night with drinking and dancing. The next morning, Jen finds herself alone with Dimitri and Stan. She tries to ignore them, but Stan won't leave her alone and eventually rapes her. Richard is angry, but then wants Jen to live in Canada with a bribe to save his friend. When she refuses, he pushes her off a cliff and leaves her for dead while he and his friends go hunting. Jen isn't dead and embarks on a grueling journey for survival and revenge.

Revenge is one of my favorite rape revenge films mainly because it's actual from a female perspective that gets so many things that men don't. Right from the beginning, Jen is viewed as an object. The camera focuses on her butt in a skimpy pink bikini. The men at the party view her through binoculars, seeing one part of her at a time. This type of gaze makes it clear that she is an object, only seen in bits and pieces and never as a whole, full person. She is only valued for her appearance. It's off putting to watch, but will change as the film goes on. Coralie Fargeat includes so many excuses that people use to blame women for rape here. Jen is sleeping with a married man. She wears revealing clothing and skin baring bathing suits without caring who sees or judges. She dances sexily with Stan when Richard refuses. Victim blamers would say "look what she's wearing," "she led him on," "what did she expect," but Fargeat lays the blame squarely where it belongs: on the rapist and the men who did nothing to stop it.

Richard leaves the next morning to sort out their hunting trip and leaves Jen alone with Stan and Dimitri. Once Stan is alone with her, he thinks he can claim what he views as Richard's object. He starts a conversation with Jen, seemingly lighthearted, that gets increasingly insistant. When she lightly rejects his advances, he demands to know why she found him attractive last night and then suddenly not today, focusing on her dance as a tease and a come on. The scene where he questions her is so uncomfortable. Jen does so many things to try to reject him in a socially acceptable way like playing a game on her phone to avoid eye contact, uncomfortably laughing, angling herself away from him, and trying to placate him. This felt so real because coming out and saying no or leave me alone can come off as rude. Being alone with someone, especially an entitled man, and being entirely at their mercy is frightening and women are still expected to put the man's (or whoever's threatening them) emotional comfort above their own physical comfort. Stan ignores every cue, invades her personal space, and eventually attacks her.

Too many others films of this subgenre focus on making the rape scene graphic and titillating while this one focuses entirely on Jen's experience. This puts the focus on Jen's emotions about what's happening to her instead of being exploitative. Right before, Dimitri had walked in on them, clearly seeing her in distress. Stan crudely says to join in or leave and Dimitri returns to the pool with snacks. During the assault, Jen's face is seen through a floor to ceiling glass window while Stan shoves her against it. Dimitri turned up the TV so he couldn't hear Jen. The only sounds during this scene are the loud TV, Jen's cries, and the rhythmic pounding against the glass. Beside Jen's face, Dimitri's reflection is seen as he floats in the pool. Dimitri's indifference is squarely in front of her and she can hear it in the loud TV. This puts Jen's emotion and experience into focus rather than the assault itself. This is done very rarely in a rape revenge films, the only other one I can think of being the Soska Sisters' American Mary. It puts Coralie Fargeat's view in comparison to almost every other rape revenge film that clearly views men as their audience to titillate rather than other women who could relate to the woman's experience.

Afterwards, Jen locks herself in the bedroom until Richard returns. He is angry at Stan, but only because he views Jen as an object. In his view, Stan essentially played with the toy Richard brought for himself. Richard's solution is to force Jen to move to Canada, get her a new job, and give her a bunch of hush money without regard to her life, family, or her well being. Jen understandably rejects his offer and threatens to tell his wife everything. In response, he pushes her off a cliff where she is impaled on a tree. Richard and his friends leave for their hunting trip and plan to dispose of her body after they come back. She defies their expectations and survives, getting out of the tree in an ingenious way. From this moment on, the men completely underestimate her. At first, they think she's dead. When they return to see her gone, they view it as just another hunting trip with a weak, wounded animal in their sights. They don't take the proper precautions like staying together, being watchful, or getting prepared in any way.

Jen doesn't say much after this point in the film and speaks with her actions. After dispatching Dimitri, she steals a dirt bike and tries to escape on it. It eventually runs out of gas, but she walks to a cave and makes a fire to warm herself, eats the peyote hidden in her locket, and tends to her wounds. While some aspects of this are unrealistic, it's more about the metaphor. Through the fire that gets her off the tree and this fire, she is reborn as a revenant in a hallucinogenic haze, emblazoned with a phoenix that healed her wound. The next morning, nightmares upon nightmares visit her, reminding her that she's still being hunted. What follows is an intense cat and mouse game with Stan and Richard that has moments of each getting the upper hand before the men are killed. Before he dies, Richard screams "Women always have to put up a fucking fight" in Jen's face because he's frustrated that she won't just roll over and die. It's wonderful to see such entitled, privileged men get what they deserve and have a woman deliver justice. Jen survives and it's implied that she escapes on the helicopter meant for the men.

Revenge is a satisfying piece of cinema that captures a woman's perspective in a rape revenge story. I was pleased and surprised to see even small details, like the uncomfortable conversation between Stan and Jen, ring true to my experience and what I've seen happen to others. While it's not the first, it's amazing to see and it won't be the last. It has elements of the brutal French extremity movement, but stays squarely with Jen, her feelings, and her experience throughout the film. I look forward to what Coralie Fargeat does next and I hope she will stay in the horror genre for a while.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins