Ravage

Harper's (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) on the run. She's in the Watchatoomy Valley and she's seen something she shouldn't have. A visit to the local cop shop ends up with her tortured and abused by a landowner called Ravener (Robert Longstreet) and his gang of hired scumbags. They're out to protect their land from developers and are willing to do awful things to keep outsiders away. Harper's ingenuity gets her away from them but freedom is still days away. All she can do is fight back. So she does. In spades.

There's the seeds of a decent thriller in Ravage. We get a solid and believable heroine from Annabelle Dexter-Jones as Harper, the nature photographer with survivalist skills. Some grotesque bad guys who's plan to protect what's theirs is leading them down some very dark avenues. A nicely unsettling cameo from Bruce Dern and all round better acting than we usually get treated to in films like this. There's a couple of well crafted kills in a setting that's a sandbox of possibilities but then it goes and ruins everything with a pointless dud of an ending that's supposed to feel meaningful but ends up meaningless due to the framing device the film uses to tell it's story.

In 1978 Meir Zarchi directed I Spit On Your Grave. A rape/revenge thriller that went heavy on the former and light on the latter. Not surprisingly it was banned all over the world (It's still banned in Ireland). Ravage is a remake of sorts but one that thankfully spares us the sight of Harper's suffering, with Dexter-Jones's performance and her reactions to the men she meets on her journey telling us all we need to know about her ordeal. She's merciless and her actions make for grimly satisfying viewing and then......it's over and you're left looking at your phone wondering why the film is only 80 minutes long. And why 4 of those minutes were her walking in slow motion towards the camera as the credits rolled?! 

It's a bizarre story choice to end a film on, one that won't leave viewers happy. It can be looked at as yet another example of man's inhumanity towards others, an ending to a story that was never going to have a fairytale finale, even some kind of allegory about the state of modern day America if you really feel like stretching. But no, here it just feels like they ran out of story. It's frustrating. Harper deserves a better send off than this but modern day horror's tendency to end on a shocker far too often gives us endings designed to make us gasp instead of leaving us satisfied.

Ravage is streaming now on google movies. Despite a strong leading lady it's not worth your time or money.