Katie Carter (Jemma Dallender) is a young woman from New York with high aspirations for herself. She wants to be famous in the world of modeling, but she’s falling behind and running out of time. As she continues working at her menial job at a local diner, it is brought to her attention that it is now or never if she wants her big break. Low on cash and desperate to meet her goals, she is willing to take up the offer of a low-end photographer in order to help make her dreams come true. She finds herself in the midst of three sadistic brothers who have no boundaries and are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want from Katie. As she unwittingly falls deeper and deeper in the grasp of the brothers, her world is ransacked and left in shambles. Now, with nothing left to lose, Katie has a new dream--revenge.
With her eye on the prize, she will do whatever it takes to make the assailants pay for what they have done. Director Steven R. Monroe continues his journey of demented cinema as he takes viewers down a new path of rape, mutilation and murder. This installment in the I Spit on Your Grave trilogy managed to somehow play out even more twisted than the first. Unlike most horror films that begin with some sense of positivity, Monroe and composer, Nicholas Fitzgerald, chose to begin with dark and ominous music that followed Katie everywhere she went. The three Patov brothers, Ivan (Joe Absolom), Georgy (Yavor Baharov) and Nicolay (Aleksander Aleksiev), played men without any moral compass and without even the slightest ability to feel empathy or remorse. Their characters were slimy and disgusting and, yet, they were perfect. Between Gillian Hawser (casting director) and the makeup department, they created the perfect villains to play opposite Dallender. They fed off of her expressions and emotion and they followed her every move with loud, haunting footsteps. When she slipped up and audiences found her delivery a bit slovenly, they were able to hold strong and balance out her performance with theirs. While the acting, for the most part, was impressive, the issue with both Dallender and Aleksiev were their accents. Dallender being from London--and attempting to sound mid-western--her native accent occasionally slipped through and threw off some of the more intense scenes. Aleksiev, who is from Bulgaria, both in reality and in the film, appeared to have a very broken Bulgarian accent. Much of what he said sounded as if it were coming from an American trying to hide their accent, and, like Dallender’s issue, ruined some of the more serious scenes in the film.
The camera crew was able to efficiently capture the raw emotion on the faces of each actor as they were tortured. The visuals are difficult to handle, but essential to the story and the audience's ability to empathize with each character. The more difficult the film became to watch, the more appealing the story was. The horrifying acts of violence and the closeups of the actors as they took place made the film feel more real and, thus, making it more appealing to audiences. Monroe made the story darker, the characters better and flow of the film more smooth than the first.
Overall, the film took the series in a positive direction, but left audiences concerned about Katie’s story. Leaving the conclusion open-ended allowed for Monroe to add additional installments and present audiences with more, demented tales of suffering.
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