Revenge 2017 ★★★★½
The rape-revenge subgenre of films is a tricky one because the filmmaker has to walk a tightrope whereby the initial violation is neither exploitative nor titillating, must be sufficiently awful enough for the revenge to feel justified, yet not so horrendous that the perpetrators have enough humanity to be fully rounded characters and for the audience to be invested in the plight.
Similar criteria apply to the revenge element: proportionate to the character and the initial attack, not so egregious that the victim becomes dehumanised when meting out her vengeance, but sufficient for the audience to feel that the guilty have been punished and ultimately, there are no winners.
I won't regurgitate the plot in any detail; suffice to say that a young woman, Jen (Matilda Lutz), is raped and left for dead by her wealthy boyfriend and his two friends, but she remarkably survives and decides to take revenge.
As with so many films like this, the film relies heavily on the protagonist's performance, and fortunately Lutz is superb. Because the backdrop of the friends' get-together is a hunting trip, the plot device wherein the hunted becomes the hunter, and it's a 'kill or be killed' situation is not the cliché it would be without characters having high-powered rifles, shotguns and hunting knives.
I think this is an excellent movie, a taut and appropriately gory thriller, and one I highly recommend, though it's not a film for the squeamish!
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