Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 3.0
Horror porn: psychological, graphic, brutal...and hard to look away.
There all types of horror that play it safe (spooky sleight of hand tricks), desensitizing, predictable and boring (gore and blood) and those that take you off the beaten path and you're not quite sure you wanted to go there. Like this film, which I'd always heard about as a cult classic and it was on Netflix.In this 1970s version of 'I Spit On Your Grave', a title that has nothing to do with anything, we meet Jenny Hill, a beautiful New Yorker spending a summer in a secluded lakeside area to write her first novel. Innocent enough. Except for the local gang of men, who decide to have their fun with a lone woman in the woods. They stalk her, rape her repeatedly, beat her brutally and then attempt to kill her. After weeks of recovery, Jenny's rage is the only solace as her world is fractured and will always be. She plots her revenge, carefully and methodically, and detachedly but effectively. This is not a film you 'enjoy' or even 'like' but most definitely may despise and hate. It is a film of experience and emotion--of the audience.What is more disturbing, that there are exploitive films like this? Or that I watched the whole thing? Or that I knew the plot and still watched it? Or that while it made me think, I am not as disgusted as I should be? There is something to be said about shock value and in horror films like this one, and others--likeIrreversible (English Subtitled;Dragon Tattoo Trilogy: Extended Edition&The Girl Next Door--where they insidiously cull the viewers to be participants in the acts of terror and primal violence by not looking away. We flinch, we gasp in repugnance but watch it, and that is what's chilling and horrific.I neither disliked or liked this movie but there were many ethical and moral questions that arises from such a movie that involves gang rape of the worst type of violence, and how that is handled. I felt the impact of that and I'm not sure what to think. Jenny wins, but does she? The evil guys get what they deserve, but did they? There is a weird sense of satisfaction when Jenny takes matters into her own hands, but by what design did she aid in her own self-destruction? By exacting her revenge, does she become as vile as the men who violated her? There are no winners and losers in this story. This is a movie to shock, and it does, but whether the director and writer attempted to expound a social and cultural view on rape and the aftereffects of the act, is the question; and if they did not factor in the deliberate psychological and traumatic terror, were they irresponsible in handling the whole film entirely? Yes and no. Horror movies are meant to be thoughtless and visual, taping into the most visceral part of humans, fear. If I gain more than that, I took it more seriously than was intended, and in that, this film was (too) successful.