I said in my review of the tired remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” that the core audience for horror films doesn’t actually want to be scared, shaken or unsettled. They want highly predictable surprises and a nice comfy silliness around the whole thing. Gotcha! Something jumps out of the background, and everybody titters. Whew! Surely the scariest film of the last decade was “United 93,” and yet I didn’t see a lot of teens lining up for that.
The new low-budget, no-star remake of “I Spit On Your Grave,” which arrives next month, is in the genuinely scary category of recent horror films such as the remake of “The Last House on the Left” and “Funny Games.” This thing only contains a few minutes of violence, but that violence is devastatingly well-framed by matter-of-fact weirdness and ever-growing suspense. I’ve seen a lot of horror flicks in the last five years, and this is one of the most gripping — a fantastically twisted full-bore freak-out, a queasy visit to the land of inappropriate behavior. It’s unrated. Can you handle it? I don’t think you can. Stay home and watch “Dancing with the Stars.” You’ll thank me.