The rape-revenge movie: what is to be done? Four decades ago, as the video nasties scare began to percolate, rape-revenge narratives joined “Italian cannibal movies” and “concentration camp exploitation” in the list of topics least likely to be officially approved for release. Now, our most accomplished female screenwriters and directors are lining up to overhaul a genre once synonymous with gratuitous misogynistic violence. Emerald Fennell’s Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman gained plenty of praise – albeit not in this manor – while Michaela Coel fared noticeably better on TV with I May Destroy You. I May Destroy You is excellent, but it’s also a miniseries, implying that the complexities of a sub-genre previously associated with eighty-minute grindhouse cheapies can now only be successfully explored in six hours. Where does that leave Violation, a feature debut from writer-director-star Madeline Sims-Fewer, released on Blu-Ray by Acorn Media following a successful spell streaming on Shudder?

Not as disadvantaged as you may think, it turns out. Violation follows in the footsteps not of Fennell or Coel’s work primarily, but rather Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, an early acquisition for Shudder. Like Revenge, Violation retains the classical form of a rape-revenge movie in order to subvert expectations more successfully. Unlike I May Destroy You it’s a feature film, unlike Promising Young Woman it’s happy to acknowledge its shared DNA with the likes of I Spit On Your Grave and Ms. 45. Violation is not “a nasty” in the 1980s sense of the word, but it certainly is nasty, revolving around a corpse-disposal scene so protracted and visceral it makes equivalent set-pieces in Blood Simple or Shallow Grave look clean and easy.

Comparing this film, which Sims-Fewer co-directed with regular collaborator Dusty Mancinelli, to older, less feminist-minded rape-revenge movies shows some striking differences. To cycle back to I Spit On Your Grave, many people have argued that the gang-rape which begins that film is so indulgently displayed that no amount of vengeance afterwards can dispel the air of misogynistic exploitation. The rape scene in Violation is very different. Committed by an apparently trustworthy friend rather than a gang of strangers, it’s shown in tiny, impressionistic details, with the essential truth of the scene – the fact that Sims-Fewer’s Miriam was asleep and unable to consent – revealed through dialogue rather than potentially triggering imagery.

It’s a depiction fully in line with modern sensibilities, and in another film I’d be applauding it. In this film, it’s a bit more complex. The truth is, Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli’s decision to make the rape scene so implicit sits uncomfortably with their decision to ramp up the revenge to gruelling, New French Extremity levels. The former is understood intellectually, the latter is understood viscerally, and it can take a bit of time for the viewer to switch from one mode to another. Traditional rape-revenge films work on a basic gut level: once you’ve experienced the horror of the first half, the brutality of the latter half feels more justified. Individual viewers will have to work out whether Violation’s decision to render one half of the equation in near-abstract form is sensitive or sanitised. 

That said, you still understand Miriam’s trauma perfectly well through Sims-Fewer’s performance, which occasionally reaches a level of convulsive anguish comparable to Isabelle Adjani in Possession. The body disposal scenes make it perfectly clear why this film needs two directors; there is no way Sims-Fewer could have committed so fully to the scene where Miriam throws up after cutting a throat and worked out where the camera goes at the same time. 

Like a lot of modern horror movies, Violation can edge towards self-parody as it tries to assert its status as serious art, with blasts of mournful classical music, aggressively muted digital colour correction and a running motif of hunting and trapping animals that isn’t as subtle as the script thinks. But the use of flashbacks is both sophisticated and successful, and the 107-minute run-time allows for some genuinely fascinating digressions. There’s a particularly great scene where Miriam, high on her power to dish out retribution, wades into an argument between a husband and wife that seems to be about to turn violent. Screaming at the top of her lungs, she’s shocked to see the wife side with her man against this furious stranger. As far as illustrations of the limits of force as a tool of gender equality go, it’s subtler, stranger and more original than I expected going in. Extras are small but enlightening, centring around interviews with Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli.

VIOLATION IS ALSO AVAILABLE TO WATCH ON SHUDDER

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