By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
As a film lover, there’s nothing quite as fun as putting on a random movie and discovering it’s actually a mind-blowing masterpiece. That’s the case with Revenge (2017), a movie which takes the shopworn rape/revenge formula and makes it feel surprisingly fresh and powerfully provocative.
To discover the best revenge thriller made in the last few decades, all you have to do is stream Revenge for free on Tubi.
A Plot As Straight and Sharp As a Knife
The premise of Revenge is that a woman is having an affair with a married man who flies her out to his desert vacation home. However, things go south when she threatens to expose his affair, resulting in him attempting to murder her. She survives and spends the rest of the movie hunting down her ex and his hunting buddies, proving that the most dangerous game isn’t man: it’s woman.
The cast of Revenge is small but perfect, including Matilda Lutz (best known outside this film for Rings) as a victim turned relentlessly fierce final girl. Meanwhile, Kevin Janssens (best known outside this film for the TV show Vermist) is chilling perfection as the jilted boyfriend turned savage murderer. Vincent Colombe (best known outside this film for Lee) plays a creepy rapist whose awful predilections accidentally kick the entire brutal plot into high gear.
A Stunning Directorial Debut
The cast in Revenge is perfect, but it’s also important to credit Coralie Fargeat for such a jaw-dropping directorial debut. Adapting her own killer script, Fargeat instantly established herself as a brilliant new voice in horror who elevates the genre with female twists on traditional male tropes.
Later, she took all of this to the next level when she directed The Substance. That movie was nominated for five Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director) and took home the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Incidentally, Fargeat is only the ninth woman to ever be nominated for the Best Director Academy Award, and she received this awesome honor for her sophomore film. That might give you an idea of what a visionary creator she is, and anyone who enjoyed The Substance will enjoy checking out her earlier film.
However, if you happened to think The Substance was too hard to understand, don’t worry. Revenge has a streamlined plot that is easy for both mainstream audiences and horror hounds to keep up with.
Slashing Its Way To the Top
While critics often dismiss the horror genre, Revenge was almost universally beloved when it came out. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a score of 92 percent, with critics praising the visceral thrills of a film as bloody and breathless as it is relentlessly brutal. Critics also celebrated how the movie subverts the tired exploitation tropes to deliver a surprisingly feminist film that never sacrifices entertainment value for political messaging.
As for me, I didn’t know exactly what to expect from Revenge, especially because I find the typical assault/revenge movies very uncomfortable to watch. However, the director effectively minimizes the assault (which is mostly heard, not seen) in favor of maximizing the revenge part, and it’s brutally satisfying seeing her manage to turn the tables on her tormentors. Plus, the whole movie was filmed in Morocco, and the beautiful and exotic setting serves as a perfectly ironic contrast to the awful violence happening to these characters.
When Is a Horror Movie Not a Horror Movie?
I was also struck by how accessible Revenge is for non-horror fans…sure, it has plenty of the familiar genre tropes, including genuine scares and a plucky, resourceful final girl. But the movie eschews the visual language of slashers and monster movies, instead elevating the ultrarealism of our heroine’s attempts to survive. This helps to heighten the tension, and this movie had me on the edge of my seat more than almost any horror film of the last decade.
Will you agree that Revenge is the 21st century’s best twist on the familiar exploitation formula, or is this one thriller that you’d rather hunt down and destroy rather than watch again? You won’t know until you stream this blood-soaked thriller for yourself. Trust me: female empowerment has never been so savagely satisfying!
