Successful rape/revenge movies follow a simple formula: an innocent woman is subjected to a harrowing sexual ordeal, usually shown in a graphic manner to drive home the horror of the situation, after which she takes revenge on the perpetrators. The viewer derives satisfaction in seeing the villains getting what they deserve at the hands of the wronged female.
Ravage does it all wrong: director Teddy Grennan neglects to show us what makes the film's protagonist, nature photographer Harper (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), so mad (I was unsure whether a sexual assault had even taken place). Harper then proves to be a female McGuyver, getting the better of several men by setting deadly traps, but ultimately fails to settle the score with the ringleader. The film cheats the viewer, and its protagonist, out of the revenge that is so intrinsic to the genre. It's hugely disappointing.
One victim is killed when Harper lowers a packet of bullets into his camp fire, a motorcyclist is decapitated by a wire stretched across a path, Bruce Dern accidentally injects himself with an overdose of drugs and is blasted by a shotgun (off-screen), and in one particularly daft moment, Harper shoots a bloke by a river, the woman having somehow waited underwater to surprise him.
But that last man, the ringleader, remains alive by the end credits. Harper, so resourceful earlier on, makes a really dumb mistake, is captured and sewn up inside the carcass of a cow (yes, you read that right!). It's never explained how she gets free.
4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for the music, which deserves to belong to a much better film.
Ravage does it all wrong: director Teddy Grennan neglects to show us what makes the film's protagonist, nature photographer Harper (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), so mad (I was unsure whether a sexual assault had even taken place). Harper then proves to be a female McGuyver, getting the better of several men by setting deadly traps, but ultimately fails to settle the score with the ringleader. The film cheats the viewer, and its protagonist, out of the revenge that is so intrinsic to the genre. It's hugely disappointing.
One victim is killed when Harper lowers a packet of bullets into his camp fire, a motorcyclist is decapitated by a wire stretched across a path, Bruce Dern accidentally injects himself with an overdose of drugs and is blasted by a shotgun (off-screen), and in one particularly daft moment, Harper shoots a bloke by a river, the woman having somehow waited underwater to surprise him.
But that last man, the ringleader, remains alive by the end credits. Harper, so resourceful earlier on, makes a really dumb mistake, is captured and sewn up inside the carcass of a cow (yes, you read that right!). It's never explained how she gets free.
4.5/10, rounded up to 5 for the music, which deserves to belong to a much better film.