Spit On Your Grave 3

Previous films depicted revenge as cathartic—a one-and-done cleansing. Spit On Your Grave 3 suggests that violence is an addiction. Jennifer is not a hero; she is a predator who happens to hunt other predators. The film flirts with the idea that she enjoys the hunt. In one scene, she caresses her knife while watching a romantic comedy. The message is clear: trauma has fundamentally broken her moral compass.

Spit On Your Grave 3 was intended to cap the "Jennifer Hills" trilogy. But in 2019, a direct sequel titled I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu was released, bizarrely ignoring Vengeance is Mine and featuring an elderly Jennifer Hills (again played by Sarah Butler) alongside her adult daughter. That film was even worse received, making Part 3 look like Citizen Kane by comparison.

So, where does this leave Vengeance is Mine? Spit On Your Grave 3

The film ultimately suffers from an identity crisis. It wants to be a serious drama about trauma recovery, but it is shackled to a franchise built on graphic sexual violence and sadistic comeuppance. You cannot have a nuanced conversation about healing when the third act requires the heroine to slice a man's Achilles tendon.

Say what you will about the plot, but Sarah Butler commits. She carries the weight of two movies on her shoulders. You can see the exhaustion in her eyes. In the first film, she played a terrified victim turned master strategist. Here, she plays a woman haunted by her own ghosts. The scene where she apologizes to a dead man’s photograph before killing another is genuinely unsettling. The film ultimately suffers from an identity crisis

Let’s not mince words: Spit On Your Grave 3 was savaged. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 0% approval rating from critics. The consensus (from the few who reviewed it) was that the film was "exploitative without being insightful" and "tediously slow before becoming offensively graphic."

The main complaints included:

However, a small cult following has emerged in the years since release. These defenders argue that the film is a misunderstood masterpiece about PTSD and the cyclical nature of abuse. They point to the final monologue, where Jennifer tells the priest, "God didn’t save me. I saved me," as a raw feminist declaration.