Revenge (2018)
Film Review
By the Geezer of Oz
A young woman, Jen, goes away with her married lover, Richard, to a romantic weekend getaway on his secluded property. Richard’s Two sleazy friends arrive for an unannounced hunting trip. Tension in the house rises until Jen finds herself raped by one of the friends and eventually left for dead. Unfortunately for the trio of hunters, she survives and soon begins a relentless hunt of her own, for bloody revenge.
Another in a line of revenge-themed flicks from recent years, joining a few I’ve reviewed recenetly in Mandy (2018) and Upgrade (2018). Along with the unnecessary 2018 reboot/remake of Death Wish and some other, lower profile productions, it seems to strengthen my opinion that the sub-genre is truly alive, albeit not necessarily so ‘well’.
While I am fully aware that Revenge is supposed to be at the tip of the missile, pardon the phallic imagery, which is supposed to come and clear the way in the name of the #metoo movement, I cannot help but review it for what it is, a film. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for political statement in film, I even made one, however, the film still has to stand on its own and not just be a political statement of the moment, which some may appreciate and others won’t.
Now that I got all that out of the way, let’s talk about this film… Directed by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, Revenge is her first attempt at a feature film. As far as I’m concerned, she gets full points for style and aesthetics on this. As a matter of fact, she seems proficient in most technical aspects and the film looks amazing. The cinematography is great, the colours just pop at you and when the blood and gore arrive, they flow freely. All is done with pretty much four characters, one house and a whole lot of desert and looks just amazing.
The actors, led by Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz as Jen (apparently named for the female lead in I Spit on Your Grave), do a great job. Lutz (Rings 2017) is a badass, revenge focused, ass-kicking machine, though she also shows a very human side. Kevin Janssens (The Ardennes 2015) as Richard, has great charisma and fits his role well. However, to me, the more memorable characters in this were Stan, portrayed by Vincent Colombe (Point Blank 2010) and Dimitri, Guillaume Bouchede (Edmond 2018) who played their sometimes bumbling idiots and at other times menacing monsters roles so well, I found myself cheering for their survival for some strange reason.
Overall, however, I found the film to take itself too seriously. While it seems it is intended to be tongue-in-cheek, almost parody of the sub-genre and other male-targeted action-thrillers, the language of the film seems to suggest otherwise. There is no nod nor wink to suggest that this film is not taking itself seriously. From the beautifully executed, bloodied action and chase scenes to the heroine’s battles to survive, it is all too melodramatic.
It seems we are supposed to throw away our suspension of disbelief out of the window and believe that Jen has cyborg-like surviving skills and while she could not fight off a rapist, she transforms into a skilled killing machine simply due to her near death experience (which she should not have survived, let alone avenged right away) and thirst for revenge. At one point, had I been eating popcorn during this viewing, it surely would have been flung at the screen. When the sentence “Come on, you’ve gotta be kidding me!” leaves my lips a few times too often during a film, I know I will struggle to like it no matter how much I wished I did.
So while the technical aspects and performances are great, the script and the choices made by Fargeat were definitely not to my liking. I persevered with this film all the way to the end, rather than enjoy the ride. That is a shame as it could have been much better had the choice been made one way or the other, either you break the mold and make a revenge film never-before-seen, hitting us viewers from a different angle, be it parodying the sub-genre or critiquing it, etc… OR you go along with the current formula and tweak it in enough places to make it interesting.
Revenge stuck to the formula when it comes to the plot, but took itself too seriously to make any kind of interesting point to go along with its take on the revenge storyline. If this film is the “anthem for empowerment” that people suggest it claims to be, then had it been a little more believable, it surely would have swept me away.
As other reviews seem to reflect, I am clearly in the minority on this, so don’t listen to me and go and check it out for yourself. Either way, it is probably worth seeing.
A somewhat wasted opportunity, 6/10.
