Caught up with the 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi's controversial 1978 exploitation hit I Spit on Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman). While I thought Sarah Butler did an OK job of filling the role made so iconic by Camille Keaton in the original..., I really hated the way they turned the Jennifer Hills character into an almost Jason Voorhees type, hiding in the woods for months and moving around like a ghostly apparition at times. Once the rape stopped and the revenge began, the film just ventured into generic Saw/Hostel territory.
One of the great things about the original (and Camille Keaton's performance) is the way that Jennifer Hills uses her femininty to play with the males' egos and lure them into a comfortable spot before exacting her payback. In the remake, she simply sneaks up behind her abusers and whacks them on the head with a crowbar or baseball bat, knocking them unconcious long enough for her to tie them up to some grisly but unlikely and overly-creative torture/killing device. Even the famous genital amputaion scene is played here for just a brief moment of wincing and male leg-crossing, unlike the lingering sense of suffering and uncomfortableness which Meir Zarchi achieved in his low-budget original. The introduction of the sheriff character was also an unecessary addition and seemed too closely inspired by R. Lee Ermey's faux-sheriff character in the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.
