"There Are Three Of Us And We're Armed. What Are You Afraid Of...?"
With rape revenge movies holding precedent with the likes of infamous video nasties including Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave, two 1970's era releases which both ended up on the Director of Public Prosecution's list for decade-long bans and subsequently ended up being re-made for a twentieth century audience for reasons still unknown to this day, French big-screen debutante, Coralie Fargeat, cuts her teeth with Revenge, a ridiculously hyper-violent but uproariously entertaining B-movie which sees Matilda Lutz (Rings) as Jennifer, an eye-catching and knowingly beautiful socialite who travels with Kevin Janssens' millionaire playboy-type, Richard, to a rural, secluded property in the middle of golden sanded desert and is swiftly left for dead after being raped by one of Richard's associates. Whilst the cliches and the straightforward nature of the central narrative is one not exactly harbouring on originality, Revenge succeeds in a wide range of fields elsewhere, with its' ripe and tantalising stylish sensibility in particular an astonishingly brave and bold cinematic treat, and with strong performances and a staggering amount of seemingly endless levels of bloodshed, Fargeat's big-screen debut is a joyous, if tough, cinematic debut.
With Julia Ducournau showing the world last year what can be achieved if given free reigns to commit to a particular first-time project, her own personal debut in the form of the excellent Raw does bear many similarities to Revenge, particularly in regards to its' use of tone, style and B-movie violence, and whilst its' hard to envisage any movie which contains the notion of sexual violence in any form as blackly comic, Fargeat's direction of the events which unfold on-screen can't help but be chuckled at in a completely over-the-top kind of fashion, particularly as the movie morphs from its' strongly sadistic opening act to a second half which almost falls into the realm of absurdity and incomprehensibility. With bucket loads of blood, Tarantino-esque gun shot wounds and toe-curling personal first aid skills, Revenge doesn't hold back on its' well deserved 18 rating and whilst many may find the contradictory tone between the opening first act and the remaining hour or so slightly alienating, the sheer ripeness of the style in which the action plays out is staggeringly entertaining and jaw-dropping at times to behold. With a lurid, neon-dipped colour palette set against the backdrop of a searing golden-plain desert, the movie feels like a hybrid of Winding Refn's The Neon Demon and Mad Max: Fury Road, and with a penchant for the latter's unchained craziness riding through it like a hot poker, Fargeat's debut is a wild, ultra-violent ride which will undoubtedly make even the most well-versed horror movie fan wriggle in their seat.
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