 Dir. Steven R. Monroe, USA, 106 mins I Spit on Your Grave month rolls on with our latest review, with a three year gap between the remake that began a new trilogy of movies in this rape-revenge series. Not that I was expecting a great deal of plot links, or continuing storyline, or genuinely anticipating this movie would really offer anything greatly different to its 2010 predecessor. But sometimes once you get into a headspace and a zone it's as sensible as anything to just keep rolling on. There's also something to be said for having the chance to compare and contrast, so it's time for I Spit On Your Grave 2. The story follows Katie, a beautiful young woman who is an aspiring model but happens to live in a run-down apartment and is struggling to get together the cash for a fresh set of photos for her portfolio. Don't go expecting any further characterisation than that, which is basically all set up within the first five minutes. She spies an ad for a free photoshoot with a new agency, which she takes up as a last resort, and arrives to find a bunch of creepy guys – foreign guys no less, Bulgarian as we find out a bit later on. I only mention it because it just screams out like some sort of sub-Hostel xenophobia which just grated on me all the way through. If the first movie drives at the point that no civilised American could resort to this kind of rape and abuse – only terrible 'redneck' stereotypes would do that – then this movie implies that only someone from outside of America could turn to such foul actions. It's lazy, lazy writing that plays to the worst in US horror cinema. Anyway, she abandons the photo shoot when they ask her to take her clothes off, but one of the gang helpfully drops off her photos on a memory stick. Unfortunately he decides to make a return visit in the dead of night to photograph her while she's sleeping – I have no idea how he gets in as the door is locked when she tries to run away – and then proceeds to rape her on the floor of her apartment. Of course much worse is to come as the rest of the Bulgarian gang turn up, drug her and take her to some undefined basement. It's there that her true ordeal begins... Of course, despite everything that Katie goes through, she somehow manages to survive and make her escape to find she is actually in Bulgaria. Her first point of order is to go to the police, but they betray her and hand her back to her original captors. From there things only intensify for her, until they bury her alive – only for her coffin to come crashing down into an underground tunnel. To be honest it's hard to honestly comprehend that whole section, as the grave is apparently laid on top of solid rock, but let's gloss over that one for now. Because this whole section invites two bigger criticisms – one, what the hell did authority figures do to this director? He falls back on this trick not once but twice – 'ooh, aren't the authorities bad, they're obviously all in cahoots with rapists and murderers' – to suggest it's something of a personal fixation. And hat's without even mentioning the sheriff from the first movie. Also, it is a pathetic carbon copy of the first movie – which wasn't that good to begin with. The whole miracle escape from death after being left for dead is a lazy ripoff of its predecessor to boot. Naturally this movie doesn't stray from the formula, so Katie decides to live in the tunnels for a while, plotting her revenge against the vile gang who made her suffer so much. How does she find them in a completely unfamiliar city? How come these random, abandoned tunnels just happen to have all the equipment one could possibly need to enact a brutal revenge on a group of rapists and traffickers? I wouldn't hold your breath for either of those questions to be answered. I mean, the tunnels have electricity. Seriously. It is totally derelict, dusty and unused, but somehow the electricity works. You can probably tell from my tone that I didn't like this movie. In fact, as much as I wasn't all that keen on the original, I Spit On Your Grave 2 marks another deterioration in quality. It's effectively a repetition of the previous offering but everything is just a step worse. The stereotypical characters on display here are a downgrade on the 'hicks' of the first – something I thought I would never say – and the lead actress is a step down on Sarah Butler from the first, who I thought did a solid enough job. Everything about Jemma Dallender is horribly bland, and while I have no doubt this is a very difficult and very harrowing role to play, she just doesn't do it convincingly enough for me. The plot is more preposterous, in terms of both the escape aspect and the revenge element – as well as being riddled with plot holes – and the revenge aspect somehow still comes across as much less interesting than the first. RATING: 0/10. Put simply, ISOYG2 is shock cinema at is most boring and most vanilla. With characters I'd be complimenting with the term 'paper-thin', a bare bones storyline which is ridiculously overused in general and basically plagiarises its own precursor, lame acting and terrible decision-making on the behalf of the filmmakers, there's just no redeeming features here. I paid two pounds for this DVD and I still can't begin to describe how ripped off I feel. A shockingly poor 0/10 here. And I still have the third movie to go... check out the other I spit on your grave reviews below
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