Delayed Reaction: I Spit on Your Grave 2

Premise: A woman gets abducted from her home, assaulted, and trafficked to another country before escaping and getting her revenge.

Remember how I said I Spit on Your Grave really wasn't for me? Yeah, I'm not sure why I did this to myself again. The second movie in the franchise was very much the same thing. There is a long period of distressing rape sequences that go on too long. Then, when it finally gets to her turning the tables, I'm reminded that long sequences of torture aren't any more pleasant to watch.

The reason I watched though was that I was curious how they would franchise this and what corrections they'd make. To my surprise, they actually do fix a number of things that bothered me about the first movie. I didn't care for the "cultured New York woman gets raped by uneducated southern boys" angle of the first movie. It's been done to death, so I appreciated the move from the country to the city in this. Although, Eastern European sex traffickers is nearly as common a trope. Most importantly, this doesn't take the story away from the lead actress. It follows her return "from the dead" and preparations for revenge. It also foregrounds some of her survival skills early on. That's nice, because I was pretty confused how the woman in the first movie got so good at all of this.

The escalation of the sequel is both expected and too much. A rape in a remote town happening to a writer on a retreat is sort of plausible. A woman getting drugged, secretly transported to another continent, then surviving because the bottom of her shallow gave drops her into a sewer is a lot.

So, I'm still not a fan of this franchise, although, god help me, I'm kind of curious to see the third one, since it's brings back the protagonist of the first movie. I want to see how that's supposed to work. I Spit on Your Grave 2 makes me long for the simplicity of the first movie in many ways, although I appreciate a lot of the corrective steps that the screenplay makes. All in all, I rate both movies about the same. Decently made but not for me.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend