TheRetaliators Review: A Blood-Soaked Revenge Tale With No Easy Answers
Revenge horror is as commonplace as the slasher, but it has a much more complicated history than Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. Revenge movies centered around sexual assault have been rightful lightning rods of controversy, with exploitative movies like The Last House on the Left and I Spit On Your Grave giving way to modern re-imaginings of the genre like Revenge, a 2017 French film with a feminist lens, or Promising Young Woman, the Oscar-winning Carey Mulligan movie.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY After a somewhat confusing opening scene, The Retaliators introduces Pastor Bishop , a single father of two daughters, Sarah and Rebecca , who leads a sort of hard-rock church sermon early on in the film. He's strict with Sarah and Rebecca , but it's because he loves them. When Sarah is brutally murdered by a drug dealer named Ram Kady , Bishop is grief-stricken, praying for answers that may never come.
In a revenge tale with such visceral anger and intense grief, encapsulated with aplomb by both Lombardi and Menchaca, the gore feels particularly fitting when paired with the grimy underworld that Bishop slowly becomes entrenched in. Indie horror has always flourished because of its ability to tap into that grime without sacrificing what makes the genre great, and The Retaliators is no different.
The Geare Brothers were inspired to make The Retaliators after their sister Jody was assaulted in 2004. Jody survived the assault and, 12 years later, her rapist was apprehended and sentenced to 22 years in prison. The justice system very rarely provides that kind of resolution for survivors, and it still does little to heal the emotional wounds left after something like that.
Naturally, there's still anger over what happened both for Pastor Bishop and the real-life events that inspired the film. The Retaliators suggests that vengeance, even if it is achieved, may not ever be enough, something anyone familiar with the trope knows all too well. The Retaliators tries to acknowledge all of this while avoiding clear-cut answers one way or another and this is where it fumbles.
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