‘Bystanders’ Puts Rape-Revenge On The Offense
Editor’s Note: The following contains major spoilers for Bystanders.
Rape-revenge films usually follow a certain pattern. After an egregious assault, a victimized woman finds empowerment by brutally slaying her attackers one by one. This observation is not meant to trivialize the oft-maligned sub genre. From 1978’s I Spit on Your Grave to Coralie Fargeat’s debut film Revenge, I and many of my fellow survivors have found catharsis and empowerment in watching a woman rise from the worst moments of her life to punish assailants by any means necessary.
But since the genre’s first gritty entries, very little has changed about the patriarchal system that protects sexual predators. In fact, the past few years have seen men double down on their right to abuse by making excuses for themselves and blaming their victims. With a President who openly brags about sexual predation, maybe it’s time to reevaluate the way we tell these stories and the calls to action we commit to screen. Mary Beth McAndrews’ film Bystanders puts rape-revenge on offense with a killer couple determined to spill blood. Written by Jamie Alvey, this Dread production boldly reframes what real justice looks like and what survivors can—and should—expect from our allies.
Her Story
We first meet Clare (Alvey) on the eve of her sister’s wedding. An idyllic morning with her boyfriend Gray (Garrett Murphy) is interrupted by a disturbing headline: a convicted sex offender has been found mutilated and murdered. We leave them with this disturbing news, assuming that they’re simply horrified by the proliferation of cruelty and violence. Eighteen hours later, they’re driving back home in their wedding finery when Clare confesses that she’s probably pregnant. As the parents-to-be share their excitement, a frightened young woman flags them down. Running out of the forest, Abby (Brandi Botkin) begs to be saved from a group of young men embarking on what they call a “whore hunt.” Gray and Clare comfort the terrified girl as her attackers emerge from the forest spewing insults and brandishing weapons.
Early scenes show the precursor to this terrifying confrontation. We meet Abby and her two friends as they get ready for a house party thrown by Cody (Bob Wilcox), Abby’s not-so-secret crush. Inviting the girls into his family’s isolated cabin, Cody wastes no time putting the moves on his guests while his friends slip roofies into their drinks. Abby wakes up hours later in the midst of a gang rape. We see the trashed room through her blurred vision while disembodied voices narrate a brutal assault. McAndrews leaves the disturbing details to our imagination and we fade out of the scene as Abby loses consciousness again.
Some time later, we rejoin this horrific “party” on the cabin’s lawn. The boys have bound their three captives and taunt them with a variety of ominous weapons. To eliminate any witnesses, Cody plans to conclude the evening by butchering his guests. But more than just a pragmatic solution, their deaths will serve as entertainment. Cody explains that he will give the girls a 60 second head start before he and his friends begin hunting them down. While her two friends fall and presumably die, Abby manages to reach the road and signal to a passing car. Though grateful for the help, she soon discovers that Clare and Gray are no ordinary good Samaritans. They are serial killers dedicated to targeting, torturing, and slaughtering sex offenders. After a tense standoff, they give Abby’s attackers their own head start before unleashing their version of this deadly game.
Her Weapons
Dressed in a lavender bridesmaid dress, Clare looks like anything but a bloodthirsty killer. Around two months pregnant, she’s also in what many would call a delicate condition. But this seemingly fragile southern belle turns out to have nerves of steel. While searching for a scrunchie to pull back her hair, she casually roots through a case full of deadly weapons. Gray may gravitate towards the male-coded “guns, garrots, and fists,” but Clare prefers something a little more personal. She dispatches her victims with knives that require close proximity, likely wanting to feel each kill. It’s a deliciously ironic choice for a woman who murders sexual predators. Turning the tables on these disgusting young men, she delights in penetrating them with her own phallic weapons, dishing out some of the pain they’ve created for others.
Though she prefers handled blades, Clare is willing to improvise. As the chase begins, she asks for consent to use Abby as bait. The frightened girl stands in a clearing as an attacker approaches. But true to her word, Clare bursts out of the trees and tackles the man, bashing his head in with a heavy rock. Later, the couple will use a baseball bat, pieces of their wedding attire, and a tub full of alcohol to take the boys out. But this killer couple saves the worst for last. After a night of brutal torture, they drag Cody out to the lawn where they’ve set up a “makeshift barbeque.” Clare, Gray, and Abby watch in silent satisfaction as the vindictive young rapist is burned alive.
Clare draws out each kill, savoring the terror she’s able to cause. With Gray’s help, she intentionally paralyzes her victims by slicing their achilles tendons or nicking the delicate nerves in their necks. Death comes slowly as she systematically stomps on appendages and shoots sensitive areas at point blank range. While satisfying, this incremental violence is also poignant. Rape is not an instantaneous crime. As Clare explains, the experience often involves laying under an attacker and waiting for him to finish. Survivors of sexual assault are treated like bodies, dehumanized avatars to facilitate pleasure. By slowly drawing out each death, Clare puts these boys in the place of their victims. They must now lie still and wait for Clare to finish taking their lives.
Her Victims
When Abby realizes what her newfound protectors have in mind, she’s understandably taken aback. Though admittedly serial killers, Gray insists that they only steal the lives of those who deserve it. They’ve become experts in tracking down and attacking sexual predators, likely prioritizing those who have somehow escaped legal punishment. While this group of violent boys just “fell into their laps,” they’re exactly the type of offenders Clare and Gray would seek out. Alvey was reportedly inspired to write this blistering script after Brock Turner’s egregiously light sentence, but Cody and his friends represent the seemingly endless stream of men who make excuses for sexual assault and use the media to vilify and retraumatize their victims.
In fact, Cody is exactly the type of privileged young man the system loves to protect. With a boyish smile, this sweet charmer cleans up well and knows how to use inherited power to get what he wants. Just hours after a raping his date, Cody pleads with Abby to let him go, blaming shyness and a fear of rejection for his acts of brutality. One can almost hear his future arguments to a jury poised to frame him as the odeal’s true victim.
It’s only when he has total control that Cody lets his mask of normalcy slip. While rhapsodizing about past bloodshed, he blames the girls for their hellish fates, insisting that they are “little sluts” who were “begging for it” and deserve everything they’re about to experience. He’s been raised in a world where a credibly accused rapist can be confirmed for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and a man who brags about grabbing women by the pussy can be elected President twice. Why shouldn’t he think he can get away with assault? The world tells him that women are barely human and deserve whatever cruelty pops into his mind. Not only will he get away with rape, the world will rush to his defense.
While Cody’s body burns itself out, a new set of villains enter the scene. The boy’s wealthy parents arrive at the cabin, idly chatting about the night’s festivities. Far from horrified, they are merely annoyed that their son and his friends would carelessly dispose of bodies on their property. Even his mother has more concern for her antique furniture than for any of the women her son rapes and murders. They’re devastated when their own child turns up dead, but can’t extend that empathy to anyone else. Through their hellish conversation, we see that Cody is just one more link in a dehumanizing chain that uses women for pleasure before casually ending their lives. If not for Clare’s deadly intervention, these boys would absolutely kill again, then go on to raise a new generation of sexual predators.
Her Motive
Taunting her prey through extended assault, Clare remembers sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her stepfather. Her mother accused her of making up these incidents to get attention and she still carries the pain of this early betrayal. Clare will not be ignored again and now tortures sexual predators to reclaim her power. She will make them acknowledge the harm they have caused and violently force them to see women as human beings deserving of respect.
Though Clare may be comfortable with her chosen lifestyle, she does not wish the same for anyone else. Having watched her two defenders slowly torture four young men, Abby asks if she can do the honors for Cody’s demise. But both Gray and Clare balk at this request. They know that murder is a moral line you can’t uncross and they don’t want to compound Abby’s pain. McAndrews and Alvey both make clear that while violence may make a powerful statement, simply eliminating her attacker will not erase the trauma of his actions. Clare and Gray will exact vengeance on Abby’s behalf, giving her closure along with the ability to heal.
By taking on Abby’s fight, Clare and Gray become more than just allies, but co-conspirators in a war against sexual predation. It’s important to privilege the voices of survivors, but we cannot do this difficult work alone. Reporting and openly discussing sexual assault can be just as painful as the attack itself and sometimes we need others to lighten the load. Strangers step in to support Abby in her time of need though they have not been victimized themselves. Clare draws from her own history of sexual trauma, but Gray just cares about protecting women. By taking on Abby’s fight as their own, they demand change or destruction from a patriarchal world and provide a violent blueprint for defending survivors.
Her Legacy
When discussing rape-revenge movies, we always have to explicitly say that we’re not advocating for actual murder. Yes, we know it’s wrong to kill people and vigilante justice never solves the problem. Unfortunately, rapists exploit this one-sided morality. They brutally attack at will, knowing that society will reframe their violence and view them as victims. Over and over again, we dehumanize survivors of sexual assault while deminishing their pain and scrutinizing their actions. We present young men as immovable objects and it’s our fault if we don’t get out of the way.
When Donald Trump said, “they let you do it,” he didn’t mean his victims themselves. He meant the rest of the world. Every time we give credibly accused rapists the benefit of the doubt and go along with their blatant lies, we make it that much harder for the next survivor to report and enable the next “promising young man” to rape someone else.
While it’s true that carnage is never the answer, perhaps it’s time for a course correction. Since the 70s heyday of rape-revenge films, very little has changed in the way we prosecute violence against women. In fact, a new crop of female-driven stories has arisen in recent years precisely because these egregious crimes keep happening. We are now firmly ensconced in backlash to the #MeToo Movement with a proud sexual predator occupying the White House for a second time. Gray even makes a joking reference to the ineffectual Time’s Up campaign that tried and failed to harness collective empowerment. And while we should continue to share our stories and support each other, maybe it’s time to do more than just talk.
Because the world has told us that it doesn’t care and that toppling the patriarchy will be too destabilizing. Men jump at the chance to protect their own and women use internalized misogyny to sell us out, banking on hope that they won’t be next. They excoriate our behavior and find creative ways to blame us for the violence we’ve endured so that they can go on feeling morally superior. Perhaps it’s time we take our power back by force. No, I’m not advocating for violence. Except maybe I am.
Over and over again, we’ve seen society prioritize our attackers while the justice system turns a blind eye. So now we must protect ourselves and go on offense for a little while. Since men are clearly not afraid of arrest and prosecution, maybe we should make them afraid of us. With a killer couple seeking out predators, Bystanders encourages proactivity through violence and demands that we do something to curb the seemingly endless flow of sexual assault. After all, what good is a world that won’t protect its women? Why shouldn’t we smile while it all burns down?
Categorized:Editorials
