The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Revenge is a frequent motivating factor in genre cinema. Here an individual sets out to achieve a sense of personal justice for wrongs and injuries that they believe were done to them. It should be noted that this is a motivation that can be used for both heroes and villains.
Horror films are rife with villains who will often concoct elaborate revenge schemes, usually to eliminate those who have harmed them and often in ways that achieve an ironic just desserts. With Super-Villains, revenge will often be the cause of a psychic split that causes them to enact a crusade against all types of people associated. In some cases, this come about as a result of something that has resulted in Deformity and Disfigurement.
In many cases, the coin will be flipped and the person on such a vengeance trail will be regarded as the hero. There are a number of films where characters track down and eliminate those responsible, even superheroes who become revenge-obsessed crusaders such as Batman and The Punisher.
Another less pleasant variant is the Rape Revenge Film, which depicts women who have been raped taking up arms and bloodily eliminating all men responsible for their assault.
For films where revenge is enacted supernaturally or from beyond the grave see Supernatural Retribution.
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
Droll, elegant camp masterpiece with Vincent Price giving the best performance of his life as a deformed madman employing the Biblical Plagues of Egypt as a motif to take revenge against the surgeons who killed his wife
A film about a former alien abductee pottering endlessly about a cabin in order to lure the aliens who took her and take revenge. A film that is about as close to total amateurism as possible to get
Canada’s twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska’s second film is set in the dark underground of body modification,. Like an episode of tv’s Nip/Tuck with a Suicide Girls ethos. Not perfect but an impressive maturation
A small masterpiece of 1960s Italian Gothic cinema. Exquisitely moody black-and-white photography with Barbara Steele as the ideal of a Gothic dominatrix twisting men around her finger and setting a town against itself
Uwe Boll makes a big issue film about the subprime mortgage crisis. The film is packed by Boll with messages but comes down to being a variant on Death Wish with its blue-collar hero on a shooting rampage against bankers
From Walter Hill, one of the legendary action directors, comes what is either the most edgy or tasteless concepts for a revenge film – Michelle Rodriguez is a hitman who seeks revenge after having gender reassignment surgery forced on him
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
Splendidly nasty French film that feels like Thelma and Louise by way of Natural Born Killers where two women pick up guns and go on a shooting spree against men who are abusive jerks. Directed by two women and cast with porn actresses, this holds little back
Stephen King’s version of I Spit on Your Grave. What kills the film is the plot device that involves the heroine having imaginary conversations with dead bodies and her GPS
An appealingly nasty little film where a celebrity chef imprisons and tortures a scathing food critic. Produced by Larry Fessenden.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story but is a fascinating piece with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi skulking about engaged in a twisted plot involving revenge, Satanism and chess games played for human lives
Film from cult Italian director Lucio Fulci. This has almost nothing to do with the Edgar Allan Poe story. With Fulci’s trademark gore sequences tamed, there is not much else for the film to fall back on
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
An 80s psycho film where several people go camping in the Mojave Desert on an encounter group but one of their number proves to be a killer
From the generic title, this seems no more than another film about a girl seeking revenge for years of captivity a la I Spit on Your Grave. On the other hand, things are quickly turned on their head in unexpected ways
Not to be confused with Robin of Batman fame, this is an indie film about a teenage vigilante. Not always the most accessible film but eventually works in a quietly effective way
Neil Jordan teams up with action producer Joel Silver to make a vigilante film where Jodie Foster starts toting a gun against thugs on the streets after the murder of her fiancé
Uneven George Romero film from his less satisfying latter period in which Jason Flemyng wakes up with a blank white mask on his face and finds it allows him to unleash vengeance against those who wronged him
The directorial debut from Frank Darabont who went on to make The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist. A wife and her lover plot to kill husband off by poisoning him only for him to survive and plot an elaborate revenge scheme
Classic psycho-thriller with Robert Mitchum (who was never better) as an ex-con determined to take revenge against lawyer Gregory Peck. Stark and superbly sustained psychological suspense
Martin Scorsese remakes the classic thriller with Robert De Niro playing the ex-con seeking revenge against his lawyer. Scorsese makes the morality more ambiguous and bring out tensions within the family
The very first Stephen King adaptation, a hit that made King’s name. Brian De Palma directs with flamboyant visuals that make you gasp but the film would be nothing without its amazing central performances from Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie
TV mini-series remake of the Stephen King novel, which restores many aspects of the book not in the 1976 film. Unfortunately, Brian De Palma has been replaced by a tv director who regards it as just another assignment
Another pointless 70s remake that replicates the 1976 Carrie almost scene for scene but misconstrues the material by a mile. Crucially, it comes without the sensational casting that made the original, nor a Brian De Palma at the helm
A man is abducted by a stranger who proceeds to remove his limbs in an effort to make him remember the terrible crime he committed. This suggests an incredibly grim film. Surprisingly enough, it is a comedy
From the people behind the Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey films, a horror version of Cinderella. And yes, the glass slipper is used to stab people
A horror version of Cinderella where she gets to stab people with the glass slipper. This also features several modernisms where instead of a pumpkin coach, the fairy godmother conjures up Elon Musk to drive Cinderella to the ball in a Tesla
A James Ellroy-adapted crime thriller with James Woods giving a very disturbed performance as an unhinged detective on the trail of a serial killer
The third of the Crow films has a more substantial story than the second but is killed by a director who has no feel for the atmosphere created by the other films
The third of The Crow sequels, starring a miscast Edward Furlong as a resurrected trailer park kid. This has a bad movie ridiculousness that killed the series off
Overshadowed by the tragedy of star Brandon Lee’s death on set, this is a beautifully dark and glistening Gothic tale of a murdered youth revived from the dead to attain vengeance against his killers. Several lesser sequels followed
The original The Crow is a cult classic. This long-planned remake from the perpetually terrible Rupert Sanders was an ill-advised move from every angle that gets just about everything from the mood to the conception of its character wrong
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
Harsh and brutal work written by Bret Easton Ellis of American Psycho fame wherein a group of jocks harass and tear apart the life of Bella Heathcote after she accidentally blinds the leader’s eye in the process of rejecting his advances
One of Shane Meadows’ harsh depictions of life in the English Midlands with Paddy Considine as a former soldier turned vigilante eliminating bullies who killed his intellectually handicapped brother
Although the character names have been changed, this is based on the book sequel to Death Wish. Saw director James Wan goes for broke on the grim vigilantism and turns in an immensely satisfying work
A reasonable and effective Canadian entry in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with Brenda Vaccaro on a weekend getaway with a boyfriend as they are brutaised by three petty hoods
The original vigilante film that spawned several sequels. This is crudely aimed at one’s red-blooded nature – to get one enraged at the lowlifes that would attack a man’s family and then cheer on seeing said lowlifes being blown away
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man becoming empowered and sorting things out with a gun?
The first of several sequels to the hit Charles Bronson vigilante film, the first under Cannon Films. While the first film had some interesting things to say, this mostly repeats the original while taking some turns to the nastily exploitative
A Mexican-made variant on one of the Saw films where a group of diverse people are locked into a room and must select one of their number to die otherwise everybody will be killed
An early film from Jess Franco in which an exotic dancer is turned into a mind-controlled assassin who lures and kills victims with her six-inch long fingernails as part of a revenge scheme
Enjoyably sordid Michael Winner film in which Lia Williams is an woman who starts to eliminate the abusive men in her life. As to be expected with Winner, this gets trashy in quick course
Passable low-budget slasher film that looks as though it is was shot in the director’s home. Somehow the title, which refers to a day when a group of teens decide to ditch school, fails to stand among the great holiday-titled slashers
Thriller about an abused wife standing up to take the law into her own hands against her husband. This has its credibility shot out by being made as a Jennifer Lopez film who does not seem to want taint the glamour of her image by seeming battered
A bland Canadian police procedural with detective Alexandra Paul investigating a woman who is killing the men who bullied and harassed her
This rehashes I Spit on Your Grave by way of The Crow with a heroine who is raped and killed and then becomes resurrected as a supernatural avenger
1980s horror with Clint Howard as a bullied military cadet who uses a computer to help decipher an occult tome whereupon he gains powers that allow him to enact vengeance on his tomentors
A film where four girls on a weekend getaway undergo a home invasion. It soon becomes apparent that this is a film homaging I Spit on Your Grave
Vigilante film with a cult reputation that was banned in places because of its ultra-violence. The film is a mix of Taxi Driver and Death Wish, mostly centred around a series of gory despatches
Copy of Willard with Les Tremayne as a man obsessed with snakes who starts using them to take revenge on those who have wronged him. This gets fascinatingly torrid.
A cultish Japanese Women in Prison film made with a wild ferocity as a female prisoner makes an escape and leads a team of women as they take revenge against men who seeks to abuse them
Supposedly a modernised version of Frankenstein, although what a story about a woman in a coma who uses psychic powers to resurrect a slow-witted handyman to exact revenge has to do with Mary Shelley’s classic is anybody’s guess
Shock film in which director Tod Browning depicts the lives of the deformities at a circus, casting real-life freaks in the roles. This was banned for many years before being discovered as a cult classic
An early work from Takashi Miike, an ultra-violent comic-book variant on RoboCop about a Yazkuza enforcer who is incarnated in a cyborg body and goes seeking revenge
In the vein of films like I Spit on Your Grave and especially Baise-Moi, two girls go on a killing spree against rapists and asshole men. Undeniably interesting but this gets sabotaged by the film’s gaping moral blindspots
Directorial outing from the creator of Final Destination about bystanders who are witness to a murder but do nothing and are afterwards killed by a possible supernatural agency
Another in the spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. A cartoony OTT vigilante film with a Gothic schoolgirl avenger, featuring ridiculous action and splatter set-pieces
Film about a series of gory deaths at a bowling alley, this really pushes an envelope of good taste. This gained attention for makeup effects artist Ryan Nicholson and was the cause of much censorship controversy
David Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis return to round out their highly underwhelming Halloween reboot trilogy. By now, this feels like a Halloween film in name only
In his second film as director, Oliver Stone ventures into the disembodied hand theme. An amazingly OTT Michael Caine plays a cartoonist who believes the hand he lost in an accident is exacting vengeance against his enemies
One of the thrillers influenced by Fatal Attraction with Rebecca De Mornay giving an ice cold performance as a nanny who infiltrates a family seeking revenge for the death of her husband.
A remake of the 1992 film that starred Rebecca De Mornay as a psychopathic babysitter who enters a household seeking revenge. This updates the story for the 2020s, although is no less a conservative version than the original
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
Ferociously entertaining Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced heroine on a revenge trail. Mostly a series of ridiculously over-the-top action moves combined with copious degrees of blood
Full-length follow-up to Hard Revenge, Milly and the same mix of ferocious action and over-the-top splatter. Despite a large budget, this is marginally the lesser in sheer entertainment
French thriller about police investigating a killer who is infecting victims with the bubonic plague and leaving Mediaeval clues, all part of an elaborate revenge scheme
One thing you don’t associate with Uwe Boll is a concern for social issues. Made in the aftermath of Columbine, this is an early Boll film that is a surprisingly solid attempt to address the scourge of US school shootings
Another in the spate of multi-director horror anthologies with each episode here being set around a holiday. As with these films, some of the episodes work well, some end with a puzzled WTF and most fall somewhere in between
This could easily have been titled I Was a Teenage Jekyll and Hyde where a bullied teen creates a formula that brings out his dark side to take revenge on his tormentors
A variation on The Most Dangerous Game that comes with a nasty feminist agenda where women are hunted by men who feel a disappearing sense of entitlement
Overrated South Korean revenge thriller about a detective obsessively pursuing a serial killer that has a mild level of ultra-violence going for it but otherwise fails to grip or dig into a psychological darkness
These rape-revenge films leave you wanting to conduct the moral equivalent of taking a shower after watching them. This sequel to the 2010 remake also ends up being undeniably brutal and effective
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
The harrowing 1970s raped woman on a revenge spree film is given the remake treatment, although is watered down in many key areas. The revenge scenes however are played up for a particular nastiness
I don’t enjoy watching these rape and revenge films. Continuing to make sequels showing abuse definitely crosses an exploitative line. After 41 years, director Meir Zarchi and star Camille Keaton re-team to make a sequel to the original
A TV movie that has been construed as a blatant copy of Carrie where innocent Kay Lenz moves into a sorority house and finds occult goings-on around her
Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi pairing from the heyday of mad science cinema. The science is portrayed with a fascinating and fearful Gothic awe, which leads to some captivatingly directed scenes
A highly controversial Gaspar Noe film that is all told in reverse chronological order, depicting the rape of Monica Bellucci and violent revenge by her husband Vincent Cassel
A blatant ripoff of Carrie about a tormented girl who takes psychic revenge using snakes. Without Brian De Palma in the director’s chair, this only looks like a cheap tv movie
A Spanish slasher film reminiscent of I Know What You Did Last Summer, albeit rewritten for the Cancel Culture era, where a clown-masked killer eliminates their way through members of a book club
This gained a minor cult in which an abused nerd snaps as a result of constant humiliations and goes on a killing rampage. Tony Radloff gives an extraordinary performance
A film that sells its premise in three words. Essentially a variant on Phone Booth, this keeps a character trapped on a landmine unable to move and keeps piling on torturous twists from there
One of the first films to come out exploiting the success of Star Wars – a badly made teen underdog fantasy in which bullied Kim Milford takes revenge after finding an alien raygun
Wes Craven’s first film, a savage shock to the system about a group of psychopaths that brutalise two girls. With this, Craven inaugurated the Backwoods Brutality film; this is still one of the best of the cycle
A disappointing remake of the harrowing Wes Craven classic where the violence has been tamed down and the film is entirely missing the irony of the original’s savage ending
Edgar Wright creates a dazzlingly stylish recreation of 1960s London in a work with Thomasine McKenzie as a modern girl haunted by ghosts of the era’s dark underside
Vigilante film where Gerard Butler exacts revenge against the justice system while imprisoned in a jail cell. The dispatches become entertainingly improbable to the point that Butler almost becomes a Batman villain in all but name
An acclaimed mini-series about a frumpy woman taking gleeful revenge on the husband who abandoned her. Essentially Fatal Attraction rewritten with a feminist manifesto with hilariously barbed results
A smart and boundary pushing Found Footage film in which a regular joe wins a competition and is selected as an actor on a porn film only to be pushed to snapping point
Blumhouse production with Octavia Spencer as a stalkery mad woman who befriends a group of teens in an elaborate revenge plot. Quite what people though they were making is a scratch of the head
Another highly entertaining entry in the Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film about a schoolgirl who seeks revenge with her arm stump replaced by a Gatling gun
The first of the Mad Max films and a considerable jolt if one comes to it after any of the sequels. This is an altogether different film – a grim and violent road movie more in the vein of Death Wish
A poverty row mad scientist film where a magnificently sinister George Zucco turns his gardener into a werewolf. A copycat that was made not long after Universal’s The Wolf Man
Nicolas Cage goes all Death Wish and slaughters a cult that murdered his wife. A regular revenge film is transformed by director Panos Cosmatos into something bizarrely primal
The first in a series of films starring Robert Z’dar as an hulking, deformed ex-cop seeking revenge. Not as effective as the sequels but is lifted above the routine by a quirky Larry Cohen script
Standout sequel to Maniac Cop, the best of the series, where Larry Cohen turns in a remarkable script and William Lustig delivers incredible action sequences
The controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini makes a film based on Medea – the wife of Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts fame), from Greek myth, not to be confused with Tyler Perry’s films, Contrary to the way she is usually portrayed on screen as Jason’s love interest, there is another whole story where she is a vengeance-crazed witch who slaughters their children after he leaves her for another woman
Hilariously black horror comedy that works as a sublime satire of fine dining – with a nasty sting underneath