I have conflicting feelings concerning the continuing wave of classic-horror remakes that has been hitting American cinema since the turn of the century. While I initially object to modern productions of films whose original versions still stand the test of time, I can't seem to help myself from viewing them if only to compare them with their source of inspiration. Except maybe for Last House on the Left (Dennis Iliadis, 2009), none has even come close, in my opinion, to matching its predecessor; and they're certainly not better. Unfortunately, this trend is not broken with this over-aestheticized re-hash of Meir Zarchi's 1978 picture of the same name (aka Day of the Woman). Following the same premise as the original, Grave details the gang-rape and subsequent revenge of Jennifer Hills, a writer recently settled into a secluded cabin in the woods. Her despicable exposure to southern hospitality abruptly changes her plans, ultimately leading her to shift the focus her creative aptitudes from words to actions in the form of appropriate retributive methods (in other words, sadistic vengeance). While the concept is arguably the same as the 1978 version, the approach taken is much more pretentious and circumventing of the event at-hand, its attempts at buffing up the screenplay by giving more narrative importance to the perpetrators after the assault only serving to fill time that would've been better spent elsewhere. In doing this, the remake seems to lack the pressing and unrelenting quality of the original one, in which events unfold one after the other without waiting for characters to develop, therefore eliminating any chance for sympathy to grow for the rapists. In showing the audience the circumstances of the assailants outside of the film's main event, the new version seemingly attempts to humanize monsters and in doing so loses much of the purely exploitative quality that made the original so memorable.
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