Tripwire Reviews Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge Blu-Ray

Stepping Over The Line

Tripwire’s contributing writer Simon Kennedy takes a look at horror Blu-Ray Revenge out now…

Director: Coralie Fargeat
Stars: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colombe, Guillaume Bouchede

Coralie Fargeat has only directed an episode of The Sandman and her soon to be released film starring Demi Moore, The Substance. Some of the reasons for this lay with her 2017 feature debut Revenge. Ostensibly a body horror meets rape revenge film, it erupted not only into both genres but it also seemed to top the gore-drenched conventions from the then-new Feminist extremism cinema. Revenge finds young and naïve Jen (Matilda Lutz) spending a few days with her wealthy boyfriend Richard (Guillaume Bouchede). So far, so good. We know that he is married and she is eager for both stardom and a life less ordinary from wherever she maybe be from in America.

Richard and Jen have two days and then he will go out hunting while Jen will be flown back to her normal life. When his two friends arrive, dripping with expectation at the hunt, they find a young woman and a rather concerned friend. As tension mounts, sexual repression peaks and one friend steps over the line. They step a long way over it, and so the situation abruptly and viciously intensifies. Jen is attacked and then left for dead. The men continue with their hunting trip. However she is neither dead, nor ready to let her assailants off the hook so easily.

It had been a big deal on release. A lot of those in the horror canon and fandom seemed very impressed at the time, as was I. It had shared sensibilities with I Spit On Your Grave but with a more rational, current and possibly intellectual subtext. Though not as complex or indeed compelling as Julia Ducournau’s exceptional works, it still held its own. I am not suggesting that Fargeat’s Revenge is lacking, but more that it completes the circle of these kind of films with, as the Financial Times stated, a populist drive.

Second Sight films then released a special edition version of the film on Blu ray in 2020. That set had a lot of extra components, which served the film well. Now they have seen fit to release a standard version, which introduces it to a new audience again, dropping it into discussions about modern feminism, body politics, sexuality or many other subjects. Kat Ellinger brilliantly covers its place in these subjects for her new commentary. She can sometimes be a bit too broad in range but here she delivers an essay on the film’s vast talking points.  The other extras here were all on that Special edition too.

Special Features

• Out for Blood: a new interview with Director Coralie Fargeat and Actor Matilda Lutz
• The Coward: a new interview with Actor Guillaume Bouchede
• Fairy Tale Violence: a new interview with Cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert
• Death Notes: a new interview with Composer Robin Court (Rob)
• New audio commentary by Kat Ellinger, Author and Editor of Diabolique