I Spit on Your Grave 2 Movie Review

Runtime: 106 minutes
Release Date: September 20, 2013
Rating: R
Director: Steven R. Monroe


Katie is a former Midwestern girl now living in New York City. After a "friend" points out that her photos look like she's a small town girl, she agrees to meet with a photographer and do some new shots for her portfolio. The photographer tries to convince her to take off her clothes and pose for some even better pictures, which she rightly refuses. She later wakes to find Georgie, the brother (or cousin) of the photographer in her apartment and taking photos of her with his cell phone. He brutally rapes her and murders her neighbor who comes to her rescue before calling his family for help.


One of the men forces her to take a large dose of ketamine before they throw her in a box and she passes out. When she wakes up, they send in their "father," who proceeds to use a cattle prod on her multiple times and rape her. Katie eventually escapes and learns she's in Bulgaria, but she finds herself brought back to the same house for a second dose of abuse. When the men decide to dispose of her once and for all, she escapes again, but instead of heading home, she brings vengeance down on the men who wronged her.


There's a scene in "I Spit on Your Grave 2" where a man puts a cattle prod in a very sensitive spot, which made me wince and close my legs a little tighter. My boyfriend laughed at me, until we got to the scene where she places a sensitive part of the male anatomy in a vice and cranks it. That left us both wincing and wondering what the hell we were watching.


"I Spit on Your Grave 2" is an extremely dark movie, which made me feel a little odd for saying that I liked it. The original film had such an impact on me that I still tell people about the bathroom scene. Even though I only saw it once, it left a lasting impression on me, and I feel the same way about this one. The remake was one of those films that I watched once and promptly forgot about. It didn't seem as dark or as gritty as the original, and it felt a little bland to me. I felt completely different about the sequel.


The movie starts out with Katie talking to a friend about her modeling career, and you think you know where it's going. When they stuffed her full of ketamine, I assumed they were trying to frame her and make it look like she murdered her friend before dying of a drug overdose. She later wakes up and finds herself chained to a pole in a weird basement. When she finally escapes from the basement, she discovers that the men somehow sneaked her into Bulgaria, but that's far from the only twist in the film.


Katie is a likeable character, which is rare in a newer horror film. Jemma Dallender, the actress portraying Katie, goes from a sweet and innocent young woman to a vengeful woman who only cares about tracking down the men who took away her innocence, and she does a great job of making me believe in her growth.


"I Spit on Your Grave 2" also has a few gruesome deaths. I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but keep your eyes peeled for a scene involving a man dying of a severe infection brought on by literal shit rubbed into his open wounds. It's the type of film that had me feeling a little squeamish and wondering who comes up with this stuff. Though it's not the type of movie I would watch on a regular basis, it's definitely a solid horror flick and one of those rare sequels that is better than the previous film.

The Tortured Movie Review – How Far Would You Go?

Runtime: 79 minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: August 28, 2010

Director: Robert Liberman

The Tortured opens with a scene of Craig (Jesse Metcalfe) screaming into a cell phone that someone kidnapped his son. Through flashbacks, we learn that his wife Elise (Erika Christensen) left him in charge of their son Benjamin when she went to work. When he headed inside to find sunscreen, a stranger (Bill Moseley, House of 1,000 Corpses) grabbed his son and took off running. Though the police later find the man, they don't find him before he kills their son.

After the stranger receives a sentence of 25 years to life, the couple decide to kidnap him and inflict the same amount of torture onto him that he gave to their own son. Though the setup of how the two actually manage to find the man and kidnap him is a little unbelievable, the torture scenes make the payoff well worth it.

The Tortured definitely asks viewers to suspend belief for awhile. Craig is a doctor, but he seemingly has knowledge of hundreds of different areas and superhuman strength. After drugging the coffee that the drivers drink when transporting the prisoner, Craig manages to steal the prison van. He drives a little too fast, which leads to an awesome scene where the van careens off the road and flips over multiple times before landing on the roof and crushing in the driver and passenger front. Somehow, Craig climbs right out of the van with only a few scratches on his face.

I'm willing to overlook that minor problem because The Tortured is so dark and disturbing. They immediately grab the stranger and tie him to a table in the basement of a house they find in the middle of nowhere. Since there is no one around for miles, they have no problem inflicting their own form of pain on the man. They place his feet in a vice and twist until bones pop, shove a lit cigar deep into his skin, and in one particularly gruesome scene, Craig places a mask over his face and covers the air vent until the man suffocates. Just as he's about to pass out, Craig gives him access to air again, and the cycle continues.

The Tortured didn't get a lot of good or positive reviews, which is definitely sad because this is one of the best horror films that I've seen lately. Despite originally being released in 2010, the film wasn't widely available until the last few months. I grabbed a copy from Redbox, which was so scratched that it wouldn't play, but I found a copy at a local rental place. It was the type of film that I didn't want to watch because it was so gory at times, but it was also the type of film that I couldn't stop watching. Add it to your list if you haven't yet seen it.