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Revenge movies tend to fascinate me — not because I find them satisfying, which is rarely the case. More often than not, a curious sort of caution sets in during the latter half of your typical revenge flick. The main character experiences some doubt, or maybe some preemptive remorse. The ending is often neutered; though the villain has earned a spectacular death throughout (usually throwing in a little something extra to cement his guilt in the final moments, just so the audience’s sense of justification never slips), the protagonist often delivers a quick and painless and, perhaps with a snappy one-liner. Generally speaking, the villains in revenge flicks get much cleaner, quicker deaths than the victims that inspired the revenge in the first place.

The reasons for this seem clear: the protagonist backs away from the vengeful abyss because, on some level, the audience wants to cheer for that revenge, not recoil in horror from it. We want to believe that the avenger remains fundamentally human and redeemable; that after vigilante justice is served up, he or she can go on with life, secure in the knowledge that even they answered murder with murder, they did so in the service of a greater good. And so many revenge films end up being curiously squeamish, backing cautiously away from their own subject matter.

Two recent horror remakes fly into the face of this cinematic norm: The Last House on the Left and, more recently, I Spit on Your Grave, both remakes of 70s shock-horror classics of the same name. Now, whether or not said films should have been remade is not something I’m going to debate here. I will say that I’ve seen both versions of each film, and both remakes succeed in bringing something new to the table — and not just in terms of ramped-up gore, although that’s certainly true. (Last House, in particular, has a slightly more robust story and removes Wes Craven’s absurdist predilections.) I won’t make the case that they’re necessarily great, good, or even enjoyable films — but they do present a raw, unblinking look at revenge and challenge the way the subject matters is dealt with in film.

The plot of I Spit on Your Grave is stark and simple: Jennifer Hills, a young writer, travels alone to a cabin in the woods to work on her new book. A group of idle thugs, resenting her snobbish “big city” behavior (which occurs almost solely in their imagination), stalk her and photograph her without her knowledge. Finally, driven by machismo and insecurity, the men eventually coax themselves into a frenzy, break into Jennifer’s cabin, and verbally and physically abuse her.

Jennifer escapes long enough to encounter the sheriff, who returns her to the cabin and, in a depressingly rote example of victim-blaming, proceeds to cast doubt on her story, citing the presence of alcohol and marijuana in the house. He then reveals his utter complicity as the thugs return and the whole group — sheriff included — gang-rape her at length. They take Jennifer into the woods, intending to kill her, but she swan-dives off a bridge into a river and disappears from sight.

Months pass, and there is no sign of Jennifer. The rapists, tired of scouring the woods daily for signs of her (or her corpse), grow lax and assume she’s dead. Of course, that’s when Jennifer resurfaces, and proceeds to exact her calculated and protracted revenge.

Like the Last House on the Left remake, the revenge sequences in I Spit On Your Grave are where the film betrays its intense desire to shock. The assault on Jennifer is brutal, cruel, and prolonged; her revenge, even more so. The torture sequences pander to the darkest part of the revenge-fantasy psyche; every punishment fits the crime, and Jennifer throws her victimizer’s own words back in their faces as they suffer and die.

For example, during the rape sequence, one of the antagonists — a vain, well-coiffed type — pushes Jennifer’s face in a puddle, giggling as she struggles to breathe. Later, she does the same to him — only his face goes into a bathtub full of lye, and we are treated to a graphic show of his tongue melting into pink goo. Each of the rapists beg pathetically for their lives, and Jennifer shows them as much leniency and mercy as they showed her — which is to say, none at all.

Unlike more mainstream and accessible revenge films, I Spit on Your Grave offers no redemption for Jennifer — the final shot lingers on her bloody, muddy face, showing a broken person whose life, and psyche, are shattered, perhaps forever. We never get a good sense of who she is as a person — even the villains, who are by every measure squalid and cowardly, are more well-rounded as characters. Jennifer exists first as victim, then as killer.

A lot of revenge films like to bring up the hoary old quip, “before seeking revenge, first dig two graves,” implying that the avenger will become the thing they hate most, and this film bears out that theory. Jennifer begins the film as a sympathetic character, but ends as a cold-blooded murderer. She will not, for instance, go on to hug her child and placidly resume her life after murdering her tormentor, like Jennifer Lopez did in Enough. She doesn’t saunter heroically away, satisfied with a job well-done — she has become something unrecognizable, perhaps even to herself.

To me, this depicts a more honest treatment of revenge than most films bother with — which made Roger Ebert’s reaction to the film all the more interesting to me. (Not that I expected him to like it, of course.) These days, Ebert’s reviews seem less like reviews and more like an opportunity to moralize — I’ve always respected his opinion and insight, but time has not been kind. He points out that “if I rape you, I have committed a crime. If you kill me, you have committed another one. The ideal outcome would be two people unharmed in the first place.”

It seems curious and a little bizarre to grouse about “ideal outcomes,” which are hardly a staple of movies in general, much less horror films. A cinematic landscape made up entirely of ideal outcomes would probably resemble a never-ending episode of Veggie Tales, and I’m pretty sure he has to know that. Ebert then goes on to talk about the audience, crafting suppositions about their motivations and advising couples who saw the film to question each other’s moral turpitude. To be fair, this isn’t much different than Ebert’s reaction to the original film, which was also less about the film than Ebert’s moral horror at the audience around him.

Personally, I think Ebert’s assumption that I Spit on Your Grave endorses a moral equivalence (rape justifying torture and murder) is inaccurate. Jennifer’s torment and revenge do not transform her into a hero. The audience is not meant to admire her bravery. The entire story appeals to a much darker, less pleasant instinct in the human psyche; the raw, bloodthirsty desire to see someone pay. Most mainstream movies like to have it both ways; they indulge a little bit of bloodlust, but not enough to leave the experience tainted. Like the protagonist herself, I Spit On Your Grave spreads its arms and drops willingly into that abyss, heedless of how far it is to the murky bottom.

I Spit On Your Grave, to no one’s surprise, took a thorough critical drubbing. I myself admit to watching it mostly out of morbid curiosity. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend it, unless you have a high tolerance for explicit gore. However, if you want a revenge film that pulls absolutely no punches, this film would be it.