REVENGE (2018) ***

Richard (Kevin Janssens) takes his mistress Jen (Matilda Lutz) to his remote desert home for a weekend fling.  Trouble brews when his hunting buddies Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dim (Guillaume Bouchede) show up unexpectedly.  After Stan has his way with her, neither Richard nor Dim seem to want to do anything about it.  When Jen threatens to go to the cops, they push her off a cliff.  She somehow miraculously survives and sets out to get some payback. 

Revenge is a better than average rape and revenge movie.  It’s stylish, if a bit overlong.  It's involving, even though it’s predictable.  Though flawed, it’s certainly more empowering than most of these things. 

In fact, it turns into a female First Blood in the second act once Jen goes into a cave, nurses her wounds, and finds the strength to fight on.  She even emerges from the cave as a Lady Rambo, complete with a big ass hunting knife.  I will say her sudden transformation from laid back party girl to hardened hunter is a bit hard to swallow, but that doesn’t take away from the gut-punch effectiveness of it all. 

Revenge contains some really over the top, crowd pleasing moments.  Sometimes, it tends to get a bit self-indulgent.  The unending dream-within-a-dream scene is particularly drawn out, but at least it does have a terrific exploding head gag.  Too bad some of the special effects elsewhere in the movie look phony (like the bloody foot scene).

The film moves at a deliberate pace.  If the filmmakers took the time to punch it up a bit in the editing room, it could’ve been a real classic.  The finale especially goes on way too long.  (How many times can you run around in circles down the same hallway without seeing your prey?)  Still, it’s hard to complain when so many gallons of blood wind up being spilled in the climax.  This movie throws more red stuff around in the last ten minutes than most pictures do their entire running time.  Because of that, it’s worth a look.