I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: DÉJÀ VU (2019) **

After forty years, Camille Keaton and director Meir Zarchi return for the first official sequel to the original I Spit on Your Grave.  

Remember that film’s famous tagline?  “This Woman Has Just Cut, Chopped, Broken, and Burned Five Men Beyond Recognition… But No Jury in America Would Ever Convict Her!”  Apparently, no jury did convict her because Jennifer Hills (Keaton) wrote a book about her experience in the first movie and goes on call-in radio shows to not only recount her ordeal, but get the audience up to speed on the plot of the original.  Her daughter, Christy (Jamie Bernadette) is “the most famous and highest-paid model in the world”.  After a mother-daughter brunch they are kidnapped by the relatives of Jennifer’s assailants from the first movie, and well… uh… déjà vu.

I don’t know who thought this had to be two-and-a-half hours long.  The original was always a little long to begin with, but at least the payoff justified the elongated running time.  With two heroines, Zarchi splits the difference and the constant cutting back from mother and daughter fighting their separate battles only adds to the running time.  I’m pretty sure a lot of this could’ve been cut down considerably, but I think Zarchi was working under the assumption that allowing the attacks play out in (nearly) real time would be more effective.  (He was only about half right.)  

I don’t know if Zarchi was trying to soften the blow or say something about equal opportunity by making the ringleader of the rapists be a woman this time around.  She also wears the same wardrobe her husband wore in the first movie, which is kind of weird.  In fact, the more the movie tries to remind you of the original, the worse this one seems.  The occasional flashbacks only highlight how powerful that film was, and how this belated attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle fails.

Although the movie itself is really uneven, I have to give Camille Keaton credit.  Everyone applauds Sylvester Stallone for continuing to be an action star in his seventies.  At seventy-two, Keaton deserves the same kind of praise.  She’s tough and resilient and even though bad things happen to her, she refuses to play the victim.  When she turns the tables on her captors, she once again carries the spark that made the original so iconic.  Although that spark only shows itself briefly in the film, it still manages to make a statement.  Hollywood usually relegates actresses of Keaton’s age to grandmother roles.  Zarchi is smart enough to show that septuagenarian badass women can still kick ass, even if the picture they are in might not be up to snuff.

The rapists’ comeuppance sequences are solid.  While they are nowhere near as savage as the ones found in the original, they are moderately effective on their own terms.  It’s just a shame you have to wait so long to get to them.

As you can imagine the torch is eventually passed from mother to daughter about halfway through.  Bernadette handles herself capably enough, although she suffers from comparison to Keaton.  I can’t help but think this would’ve turned out better if they had split it into two movies; one that focused on the mother, and the other centered around the daughter.  As it is, it just crams too much into one flick.   

I Spit on Your Grave:  Déjà Vu, while a big disappointment, is not exactly a bad film.  I think Zarchi could’ve hammered out a decent flick if he was a little more judicious with his editing.  Although he does give us a couple of strong moments, that last half-hour is especially longwinded and gratuitous (predictable twist included).  

Oh, and I know Zarchi is not one for subtlety, but did we really need the scene where someone spits on a grave LITERALLY?  Multiple times?  Probably not.