Horror Movie Review: I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013)

This extremely unnecessary sequel is the follow-up to the remake version of I Spit on Your Grave, a film that was barely average when it was released in 2010.

Somehow this completely unrelated sequel got made & the world is worse for it.

Katie wants to be a model but is struggling to make traction in New York. Finishing work one night she sees an advertisement for a free photography session so decides to call them. The phone is answered by an Eastern European man who is abrupt, a little rude & confirms that it will be free.

Katie hangs up, thinks about it for like a second & decides to go get her free photographs done.

I know what you’re thinking, just how stupid can she be? In New York she sees an offer for free photos, speaks to someone who sounds & acts very suspect but still thinks that nothing will go wrong? It makes her instantly dislike-able because she is so stupid & makes it impossible to sympathise with her.

In modern day no-one would act this stupid & as a plot point for a revenge-rape movie it is incredibly lazy.

So off she goes (not telling anyone where she is going either) & meets three Bulgarian brothers, Ivan, Nikolai & Georgy… They seem like a professional outfit until the older of the three (Ivan) tries to get Katie to take her top off. What a surprise. She refuses & leaves but later that night is surprised by Georgy at her home who apologies & hands over her photos on a USB.

Even later that night she wakes up to find Georgy in her flat (who knows how he got there) filming her. She attacks him with a taser but he fights her off, ties her up & rapes her. Her neighbour tries to help but is stabbed to death by Georgy.

Things really escalated quickly here with the movie having only been on for 20 minutes (it’s over 100 minutes long)! Georgy calls his brothers who come over & help him clean up before drugging Katie. It seems as though this isn’t an unusual situation for the men.

Katie than wakes up in an old basement, naked & handcuffed. She is a prisoner to the brothers who abuse her physically & mentally as well as share her with other men.

It’s long-winded & pretty brutal, frustratingly so as it begins to stretch the reality of just how someone could actually survive in this situation. The emphasis on making the brothers as twisted & horrible as possible really lacks a lot as their motivations aren’t revealed until nearer the end & even than it really doesn’t make much sense.

Even worse are the attempts to make Georgy the nicer of three because he has deeper feelings for her (Funny that he was the first one to rape her then).

The thing is we know she’s going to escape, I mean she has to get her revenge somehow so it’s all a waiting game & it’s really not that interesting. A fake-out escape where it is revealed that she has been taken to Bulgaria just makes things even more frustrating, how exactly did they get her there from America with no-one noticing? It’s just another plot point that is never explained.

Eventually Katie is buried alive but gets lucky as the ground below her collapses & she falls into the sewers below.

She then sets about healing & planning her revenge on her attackers. Unlike the first film this one focuses more on Katie as we see her surviving in the sewers by stealing from a local church. I was so disappointed that this part of the movie wasn’t done like a Rocky style montage. It would have improved the movie ten-fold.

From this point on it’s all downhill as Katie sets about capturing & torturing those who attacked her. Its attempts to shock are laughable as she captures Georgy, cuts his body & rubs poo into the wounds so they get infected. I’m not making this up!

She drugs Nikola & drowns him in the worst toilet in the entire world. Katie, a stick-thin woman who has been living on scraps she could find or steal manages to hold a large man’s head under water for enough time for him to drown. I know he was drugged but all that seemed to do was make him dis-orientated & feel sick. He puts up such little struggle while his head is being held under.

The rest of the movie seems to realise that it’s been on for far too long so suddenly decides to speed things up as Katie deals with the rest in short but bloody succession. All while a policeman who failed to help her once before gets closer & closer to finding her.

It’s such a chore of a movie with very little to redeem it. The grey drudgery of Bulgaria mixes with the grey drudgery of the films story & acting. For a film so hell bent on making sure you know Katie was wronged it tries far too hard to often ‘explain’ why the wrong-doers may have done what they did. What the fuck is that about? Why do we need an abusive back-story for the abusers? It’s not like we’re supposed to care about them!

Character development is unimportant when you already know what is going to happen to the character way before it even does. Katie needed it & she doesn’t get it. In fact her character becomes so over-powered & cartoonish that I found myself laughing far too often.

Part of the comedic appeal here is Katie’s acting…it’s bland when she isn’t after revenge, decent when she’s being abused & awful when she is on her vengeance kick. Seriously, I burst out laughing during one scene where she is screaming in someone’s face.

She’s bad but so are the brothers, delivering their lines with little energy or interest. The highlight is Ivan’s small speech about who is sick & who is a sick fuck out of the family. It’s terrible & you can almost see the light go out in his eyes when he says it.

Far too long, with dumb plot-forwarding devices, far too many unanswered questions, an over-reliance on gross moments, bad acting, bad dialogue & an ending that is a ‘throw your hands up, I’m done here’ kind of ending.

There’s a third movie!?