There isn?t a single commendable moment in the new horror-thriller Bound to Vengeance, but one scene in particular contextualizes director Jose Manuel Cravioto?s film in ways that couldn?t have been intentional yet are tragically on-the-nose. The film?s protagonist is Eve (played by Tina Ivlev), a 21-year-old who, six months before Bound to Vengeance?s action happens, was kidnapped by a hulking and snarling brute, locked in a dirty, claustrophobic room filled with metal leashes and a stain-covered mattress, and used to help despicable, older guys earn ?top dollar? through sexual acts. Eve?s past life with her boyfriend, Ronnie, is shown through camcorder-shot flashbacks, all of which take place at an outdoor carnival. During the flashbacks, Eve plays one of those shoot-the-water-in-the-hole games that require authentic-looking water pistols. After she?s done firing, Ronnie, who?s holding the camera, patronizingly says, ?Ooh, you look like you can handle a gun! I like tough women! I like tough women!? And Eve smiles back, clearly unaware that, six months later, she?ll fight her way to freedom by killing multiple male rapists, plus one crazed and scantily clad fellow woman prisoner to boot.
Bound to Vengeance is yet another hollow, one-note exploitation throwback, a lowest-common-denominator film made with the sole purpose of attracting genre fans who can?t get enough of their I Spit on Your Grave wannabes. Succinctly dubbed ?rape/revenge films,? movies like I Spit on Your Grave and Bound to Vengeance adhere to a very simple philosophy: women are helpless, but if violated horrifically enough, and if they find themselves near a few power tools, they can get medieval on those son-of-a-bitch men who?ve done them wrong, not to mention, in some cases, all men who are unlucky enough to cross the scorned female?s path.
Or at least that?s just the bad ones. There are, of course, a countless number of great horror movies that are centered around women, ranging from classics like Rosemary?s Baby (1968) to more recent cult favorites like Lucky McKee?s May (2002) and Adam Wingard?s You?re Next (2013). Some of the biggest Hollywood-made genre films of the last few years have been steered by women characters?James Wan?s The Conjuring (2013) provided Lily Taylor and Vera Farmiga with their best roles in years, while the hugely lucrative Insidious franchise has grown into a Lin Shaye showcase, giving the seasoned character actress the kind of marquee placement that?s hardly ever afforded to women over 40. ?
The binding ties between horror and women run deep. ?There?s the aspect of a woman in danger and thus male audiences feel a bit protective over characters like that,? says Heather Wixson, managing editor of DailyDead.com and a multi-decade veteran in the horror industry. ?And then there?s the idea that women like to see other women prevail because a lot of us have had to fight to fit into whatever part of the world we belong to. Look at [Alien franchise heroine] Ellen Ripley?there?s a reason that no other ?final girl,? not even Jamie Lee Curtis, can compare to her. She relates to everyone: we?ve all been screwed over by a place we?ve worked for at some point or another; many of us have dealt with issues related to motherhood, or fatherhood, and needing to protect those we love, akin to her with Newt in Aliens. We?d all like to hope that when we have to face down our ultimate fears that we?ll able to find the courage to do so, much like Ripley does time and time again.?
For every one Ripley, though, there are three or four Jennifer Hills, a.k.a. Camille Keaton?s character in I Spit on Your Grave (1978). Women-on-the-warpath films like I Spit On Your Grave and Bound to Vengeance aren?t always the pits. The best of them all is Ms. 45, Abel Ferrara?s 1981 thriller that begins with its main character, Thana (Zoe Lund), getting raped in a seedy Manhattan back alley and gradually follows her evolution from a shy pushover into a confident, almost-Terminator-like sociopath who opens gunfire during a Halloween apartment party. As Lund?s stone-faced character empties bullets into partiers wearing hilariously garish costumes like Mr. Met, Ferrara stages Ms. 45?s violence in at a simultaneously operatic and hypnotic pitch?it?s urbanized Grand Guignol. A more recent example of quality rape/revenge cinema is Canadian siblings? Jen and Sylvia Soska?s American Mary (2013), which, like Ms. 45, benefits greatly from a clear and conscious artistic energy. The Soska sisters create a unique world within the body-modification underworld, and when Mary (Katherine Isabelle) gets raped by an older male colleague, she turns to a subculture of underground surgeries to exact her paybacks. American Mary is more concerned with its singular vision than any perverse titillation. In other words, it?s the polar opposite of a film like Bound to Vengeance.
Bound to Vengeance had the misfortune of opening on the same day as director Jason Banker?s mesmerizing Felt, one of this year?s best genre movies and haunting subversion of the rape/revenge conceit. Felt is, as Banker calls it, ?a documentary/horror hybrid? that stars newcomer Amy Everson, playing a slightly fictionalized version of herself. Like the real-life Everson, her Felt character, also named Amy, makes felt ?skin-suit? costumes with fake penises and faux-testicles attached. And like the real-life Everson, movie-world Amy is unable to let her guard down around men, a problem that stems from a previous trauma that?s never directly cited. When Amy finally meets the nice guy who?s able to successfully romance her, she?s all smiles, but her happiness gradually devolves into a ?Will I or won?t I lash out?? battle against her darkest impulses. The film?s ending is machete-to-the-temple visceral.
Initially, Banker just wanted to make a documentary about Everson. Based in New York, Banker (who directed the similarly docu-styled horror film Toad Road) met Everson at a club a few years back in San Francisco and was instantly intrigued. He tagged along with her to other nightclubs and friends? parties where she?d arrive dressed as a school girl and would grind on men before revealing the prosthetic penis stuffed between her legs. Her bedroom?s ceiling looked like ?Tim Burton?s kid room? with its blue sky design and miniature felt dolls, including one called ?Fetal Hitler.? When Banker asked Everson about her felt hobby, she told him she?d been inspired by The Silence of the Lambs? Buffalo Bill, a reference that added fuel to Banker?s suspicions that Everson would make for one hell of a horror movie protagonist. All told, she was unlike anything he?d ever seen in a movie before, horror or otherwise.
?There?s a real focus right now on female-driven stories, and there?s so much ground that hasn?t been covered yet,? says Banker. ?I personally really only want to make a film if I can do something that people haven?t seen before, and only something that I?m curious to learn about myself. Amy was such a compelling subject that I figured if I could make a film that dealt with where she?s been and where she?s going, and just unwrap her psyche a bit, it could be something that?s really unique. I wanted to tackle an intimate kind of woman-driven horror film instead of something that?s over-the-top and gratuitous.?
Felt is a rarity when it comes modern-day horror movies dealing with women overcoming trauma?it?s a therapeutic needle tucked inside a haystack adorned with blood-stained bras and torn-up panties once worn by women who ?look like they can handle a gun!? Rather than show Everson?s past trauma via brutal flashbacks or any on-screen violence, Banker respects the audience enough to let them fill in the blanks. He only gives Everson a painfully introspective voiceover moment in Felt?s opening minutes. ?Everybody?s seen movies where the director shows everything that?s happened or is happening to the woman,? says Banker, ?but for Amy that would?ve been too unpleasant, because she really went through that specific thing. Personally, though, I did question it: ?Are people going to understand what she?s been through if we don?t show it?? But by talking to Amy about it and hearing her reservations against that, I was convinced that we didn?t need to show that stuff.?
Bound to Vengeance, to its credit, doesn?t show any of ?that stuff? either, but its filmmaker?s insistence on leering at half-naked women who are shackled to beds and used as sex objects is equally as bad. Bound to Vengeance is in much larger company, sharing its reductive disreputability with other recent garbage-bin horror films like the embarrassingly misogynistic I Spit on Your Grave remake (2010) and its even lesser sequel, I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013). They?re made by lazy filmmakers who, whether they?re aware of it or not, knock the horror genre down a peg with each new film. In 2015, Bound to Vengeance?s filmmakers aren?t the only culprits. Earlier this year, the T&A-focused slasher film Girlhouse spent more time asking male viewers to ogle its beautiful and practically naked actresses?playing college students getting paid to tease men online?than it did developing characters or pushing the slasher sub-genre forward. Girlhouse is John Carpenter?s Halloween, though, when compared to Muck, a reprehensible slasher in which soon-to-be-filleted supermodel types run from the killer in two-piece underwear just slow enough for the cameraman to keep their jiggling breasts and butt cheeks in the frame.
Sex, of course, has always sold in the horror genre. What would the slasher genre be without its emphasis on lovely women in dangerous situations? And there?s a reason why so many horror movies, both the good and the bad, focus on women. ?All women experience so many sort of micro-aggressions in their everyday lives,? says Banker. ??it?s the comments here and the unpleasant looks there, and it?s the constant feelings that you have to prove yourself to so many close-minded people. That has to be a terrifying world to live in every day.?
That everyday struggle deserves more than insensitivity. But like the only worthwhile entries into the rape/revenge category of genre cinema (Ms. 45, Thriller ? A Cruel Picture), the effective slasher films that shamelessly thrived on nubile young flesh?the early Friday The 13th movies, for instance?were products of their time that invented the wheel rather than merely continued its spin cycle. Films like Bound to Vengeance and Muck, on the other hand, feed into the ill-placed stereotypes perpetuated by those who look down on the horror genre. They give the haters reasons to further hate. ?Ultimately, the responsibility of a film?s message lies with the director, and there are a few directors out there who aren?t in this business for the right reasons,? says Wixson. ?A film like Muck may seem like something that?s trying to ?pay homage? but what it ends up doing is insulting its audience and the genre it?s supposed to be celebrating, and offers up nothing but just some T&A and a few good gore gags. And all of horror fans know great horror movies, even the ones with tons of nudity and violence, are about so much more than what you just see on the surface.?
Reductive films like Bound to Vengeance and Muck are being released when the independent horror market is, in terms of women-driven movies, in its most actively progressive state in decades. The film industry as a whole is impressively moving towards equality, one baby step (read: Patty Jenkins being hired to direct DC?s Wonder Woman) at a time. Horror, though, has been leading the anti-discrimination charge for a few years now, intensified by conscious events like Women in Horror month, LA?s Etheria Film Night and a string of watershed 2014 releases. Written and directed by Iranian provocateur Ana Lily Amirpour, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night audaciously repurposed the vampire film as a feminist Western led by a female bloodsucker who?s fascinatingly complex. The Babadook, meanwhile, found Aussie writer-director Jennifer Kent remixing the father-turned-scary-by-supernatural-forces model previously employed by films like The Shining and The Amityville Horror into a mother?s story of grief. And with Starry Eyes, their look at how far a struggling Hollywood actress will go for fame, co-writers and directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch executed the greatest and trickiest move of them all: a woman whose physical sexiness is matched by her internal psychosis and empathetic vulnerability.
In a horror landscape where all three exist, movies like Bound to Vengeance and Muck shouldn?t make it past the we-need-investors stage of pre-production. The genre deserves better, especially in a climate where seeing a great studio-made horror movie is like reading a humble Kanye West quote. Winners like The Conjuring are the exception. A comb-through of all the ?best horror movies of the year? proves that the genre has, more than ever before, been thriving on its indie artists. Couple that with the film industry?s current and long-overdue level of gender consciousness and there?s no room left for another Bound to Vengeance. ?The only place we?ve consistently seen good female characters in horror is on the indie side of things,? says Wixson. ?I honestly think that?s how it?s going to stay for a while, sadly. Studios aren?t in the business to take risks, which leaves it all to the independently working directors out there. I don?t think we?ll see a huge shift in genre-related studio projects until the female Ghostbusters film comes out and does well?and I?m hoping it does well.?
—
Matt Barone is an editor at TribecaFilm.com who?s written for Wired, The Dissolve, Rolling Stone, Complex and Birth.Movies.Death. His Twitter feed is mostly a horror movie soundboard; you can follow him here.
