As a subcategory of the horror genre, the exorcism film does not have the best reputation. For every The Exorcist, there are a dozen Posessed’s and Beyond the Door’s. Yet, when done well, there is rarely something as profoundly [...]
The most obvious update to the original formula is that Lurie moves the story from the English countryside to the American south. When Hollywood writer David Sumner (James Marsden) moves with his actress wife, Amy (Kate Bosworth) back to her hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi, he finds the town to be a far cry from Los Angeles. Filled with a first-name basis population that farms its youth for football athletes, then sets them out to pasture as manual laborers, the town could be any plucked from the deep south. A safe haven in the real world, “We all trust each other here,” Amy says. “We don’t even lock our doors.”
The viewer is smarter, of course, and not only those that know the original story. When David attempts to make a friendly gesture to the friends of Amy’s past by hiring a roofing crew headed by her ex, Charlie (the marvelous Alexander Skarsgård), he gets more than shingles. Tension builds as the crew repeatedly takes advantage of his kindness, and pays particular, uncomfortable attention to Amy.
Lurie paces his film fantastically, allowing it to unfold slowly with a careful building disquiet. Blackwater is bathed in a buttery light, and the roofers constantly clothed in autumn colors of red and orange and brown, bent in physical and violent action, from hammering nails to hunting to draining cans of beer. David, instead, is adorned in crisp white, and the only thing he hammers is his keyboard.
Playing opposite, Bosworth’s wooden Amy is unsatisfying, but Marsden is an inspired choice. The traditional rom-com and superhero star slips into the oblivious and brutal role of David seamlessly, allowing the viewer to simultaneously disagree with and root for him.
By the time the tension escalates to its gory climax, Lurie’s Straw Dogs is morally black and white. What’s missing here is the controversial ambiguity of the original, where the famous rape scene posed the question: Did she like it? In Lurie’s version, the answer is clear, and in that he misses one of the interesting elements of the original. In a world where manhood can be defined so subjectively, where strength and violence are valued over intelligence and financial success, what other perceptions can be skewed?
The avoidance of a real treatment of the rape is intriguing, and follows a mainstream trend on screen. Where modern film is increasingly explicit with violence, language, and sex, rape remains a taboo subject. This was highlighted recently in criticism of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which omitted many of the rapes included in the novels. In general, film rapes are either hinted at or threatened rather than committed; if committed, they are largely off screen.
Thus, while Lurie’s version may one-up the original with explicit gore and violence, it loses the controversial nature that horrified and intrigued viewers long after the credits rolled in 1971. Lurie’s Straw Dogs is a tight, tense thriller that will leave theaters speckled with gnawed off fingernails, but when it’s over, it will send many home to lock their doors, and watch the football game on TV.
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