Movies about revenge often conjure images of Keanu Reeves and Liam Neeson smashing through windows in search of lost dogs and daughters, but it's not just men who love getting their hands bloody after they've been wronged. From 14-year-old vigilantes to those on the verge of giving birth, women have proven to be just as vengeful as their male counterparts, using years of mistreatment to fuel their fury.
Whether their retribution comes swift in a tornado of limbs and blood or their path is slow and poisonous, the women on this list have one thing in common: They refuse to be victims. They kick open the doors of cinematic conventions to reclaim their power, often showing no mercy towards anyone who crosses them.
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Of all the movies featured on this list, few are as interwoven into the “good for her” consciousness as Kill Bill. When bride-to-be Beatrix Kiddo wakes up after a four-year coma to realize her fiance and unborn child have been murdered, she sets out on a violent crusade to kill the team of assassins that took the life of her daughter. Drawing inspiration from the lurid and gritty exploitation films of the ‘60s and ’70s, Kill Bill uses ornate costumes, set design, special effects, and cinematography to create a visually striking gore fest as The Bride seamlessly chops off multiple body parts of anyone who stands between her and her ultimate target, Bill.
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Foxy Brown holds the honor of being a pioneer of blaxploitation films and the revenge genre. Her smooth deliverance of one-liners before pulling the trigger has influenced many movies today, most notably Kill Bill. Like The Bride, Foxy's drive to seek vengeance starts with the death of a partner. When her brother rats out her undercover boyfriend to a local gang, signing his death warrant, Foxy takes the law into her own hands and shoots her way through crooked cops and drug dens to avenge the murder.
Women picking up weapons against men may not seem like a subversive subject today, but in the '70s, Foxy Brown was a novelty. Not only was a Black woman taking vengeance against white men, but she did it with agency and style.
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Promising Young Woman holds nothing back in scrutinizing a society where 'nice men' easily take advantage of vulnerable women. The confrontational film follows Cassie, a medical student dropout who has taken an aggressive approach to coping with the fact that her best friend, Nina, died by suicide after a sexual assault goes unpunished. In a move that somehow feels both justified and morally reprehensible, Cassie tracks down the man who hurt Nina while simultaneously taking down any other man lured in by her siren song.
Even with blood covering Cassie's hands, Promising Young Woman has a startling lack of catharsis. Yes, Cassie faces off with Nina's attacker and gets him arrested, but it's not Nina's assault that lands him behind bars. It's the fact that he murders Cassie in their confrontation. The subversive end makes it hard for the punishment to truly feel satisfying, but it highlights the crucial message that there is no magical escape for victims of sexual violence in the real world.
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A lot can go wrong with a movie like Revenge. The rape-revenge narrative starts like so many of them do, allowing Jen to be viewed as a sexual object who suggestively licks lollipops in a low-cut bikini while enjoying her married partner's private villa. Things take a seedy turn when Richard's friends arrive at the secluded retreat, with one helping himself to Jen's body, the other ignoring the assault, and Richard slapping Jen after she refuses to stay quiet about anything that happened.
The horrid chain of events leads to Jen being pushed off a cliff and impaled by a branch. Thinking they've solved the issue, the men resume their weekend, but director Coralie Fargeat refuses to allow the film to fall into the transgression of making Revenge only about the spectacle of sexual assault. Jen survives, and Fargeat makes sure to make that everyone's problem.
Not only does Jen's relentless assault on her assailants proves to be a wildly outrageous and sometimes comical gorefest, but it also challenges the notion that women like Jen are objects to be consumed by turning the prey into a predator.
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I Spit on Your Grave
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I Spit on Your Grave is one of the most notorious revenge movies ever made.
Things will never end well when a horror movie opens with a young girl living alone in an isolated cabin. I Spit on Your Grave takes full advantage of Jennifer's predicament and turns her quiet getaway into a living nightmare when four men violently assault her. Her assault is one of the most controversial moments of the film, the attack lasting 25 nauseating minutes before Jennifer is left humiliated and discarded.
The gratuitous nature alone was enough to leave audiences deeply uncomfortable, but Jennifer's raw transformation from a woman happily working on her novel to a victim experiencing sheer horror to a broken woman with nothing left but to brutally kill her abusers was enough to get the film banned in many countries.
Although I Spit on Your Grave is one of those films that leaves you thinking, "I don't condone it, but good for her," the shot of Jennifer leaving the cabin smiling only to turn solemn again is a stark reminder that while revenge brought her a brief sense of satisfaction, nothing was ever going to return what her attackers took from her.
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Revenge is best served with a heavy dose of body horror. Brutally underrated, American Mary follows Mary Mason, a struggling medical student who turns to the world of underground body modification surgeries to make ends meet. After a traumatic assault by her professor causes Mason to quit her residency, she takes matters into her own hands and embarks on a blood-soaked path of retribution and revenge.
Slow torture aside, American Mary is more than the blood and viscera left behind on her operating table. With each slice of her scalpel, Mason avenges her loss of bodily autonomy while building the skill set to help the women seeking her help develop their own.
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The Nightingale is a traumatic movie with downright vile characters. The movie follows Clare, a convict serving British soldiers in Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania). Clare is repeatedly assaulted by her colony's commander and his offers and then forced to watch as they butcher her husband and throw her baby daughter against a wall, killing her. Determined to make the officers pay, Clare teams up with Mangana, an Aboriginal tracker, and they methodically hunt down their oppressors.
The drive for vengeance aside, The Nightingale is more than a story about two people seeking revenge. The film is unapologetic in presenting the cruelty and racism of colonization, especially the mass murders and debasement faced by Aboriginal people in the nineteenth century.
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Everyone grieves in their own way. Some people find strength in their community or fondly remember those who have passed, and in the case of Erica from The Brave One, some buy an illicit gun and take justice into their own hands.
After a late-night stroll in Central Park leads to a brutal attack that leaves her fiance dead and Erica in a coma, Erica wakes afraid and traumatized. The altercation shatters Erica's sense of safety, but she doesn't remain a victim for long. Confronted by a man robbing a bodega, Erica shoots him to save herself, and in pulling the trigger, she realizes that she liked it. The thrill leads Erica to track down those who killed her fiance.
It's easy for films like The Brave One to focus more on body counts than substance, and while action sequences are driving the film forward, director Neil Jordan never loses sight of the fact that the film is ultimately about Erica's grappling with her trauma.
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In the South Korean neo-noir psychological thriller Lady of Vengeance, Lee Geum-ja spends over a decade in prison for the murder of a 5-year-old boy. The gruesome crime is made worse by the fact that the police arrested the wrong person - Geum-ja is innocent. Forced to confess to the slaying to protect her daughter, the mother spends most of her time behind bars plotting how to get back at the man who wronged her, Mr. Baek.
Once released, Geum-ja learns that Mr. Baek is a serial killer with a sickening habit of making snuff films of his victims, who are all children. Geum-ja tracks down the tapes and, in one of the most disturbing and stomach-churning sequences in a thriller movie, makes the parents watch as their children are tortured. Working together, the parents avenge their children by killing Mr. Baek, and while he certainly deserves his fate, it’s not enough to drown out the disturbing sounds of children begging for their parents.
As difficult as it is to sit through the tapes, it's Geun-ja's portrayal of a gentle, almost angelic prisoner and then reformed member of society that's truly unsettling. Every polite smile hides a murderous woman who chooses to let her rage fester. Geun-ja swallows her anger like a poison instead of seeking how to cure it, and the result is a low, gruesome death for everyone who wronged her.
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- 1033 VOTES
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Gritty and gruesome, The Villainess thrusts the audience into the pulpy point of view of a hitwoman forced to serve a government agency that created her. Sook-hee tries to balance being an assassin, a mother trying to give her daughter a normal life, and a past that keeps creeping through the crack of her new assumed identity. The plot shifts along with Sook-hee's allegiances, but who cares about disjointed storytelling when trick cinematography sees Sook-hee jumping through several windows while hacking through the limbs of a warehouse's worth of baddies?
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A Vigilante refuses to hold back any punches. This feminist domestic abuse thriller is all about finding solace through rage. Sadie finds purpose in acting as a guardian angel for the battered and bruised by taking down the men who dared to use their power and stature as a weapon against women and children.
With a razor focus on the aftermath of abuse, A Vigilante refuses to exploit gratuitous assaults on women but is very happy to indulge in the after-effects of Sadie swapping a punching bag for an abuser's esophagus. But it's not a film that's solely about violence. A Vigilante is tense, an uncomfortable spotlight on the blood and trauma left behind once the anger has faded. The result is a more realistic and shocking movie, despite the lack of large guns and extravagant fight sequences against a legion of bad guys.
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Peppermint speaks to a silent fear felt by many people raising a family. Newly-wed Riley is trying to navigate a snooty Los Angeles school district as a middle-income household when her husband, Chris, is convinced to help steal from a group of dangerous drug dealers. While Chris backs out of the plan, he still suffers the consequences when the gang retaliates, killing him and his daughter and severely injuring Riley. When corrupt officials refuse to punish the men who killed her family, Ripley sets off on a rampage that tears through corrupt police officers, judges, and multiple members of the local cartel.
Even though Chris arguably brought death upon his family with his poor decisions, their deaths still hint at the senseless violence that can tear apart families. Watching Ripley refuse to accept corruption to avenge her family is both outlandishly fun and oddly satisfying as she single-handedly becomes the savior of Skid Row.
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Hard Candy doesn’t hold back in putting controversy front and center. Reveling in discomfort, the psychological thriller pits 14-year-old Hayley against Jeff, an alleged pedophile.
Suspecting Jeff has been preying on young girls and is connected to a disappearance, Hayley starts an online friendship with the 32-year-old and is invited to his home. Wasting no time, Hayley drugs Jeff, ties him to a chair, and begins her slow, psychological torture. After making him believe she castrated him, Hayley persuades Jeff to hang himself from his roof.
While there’s never a question where Hard Candy stands on social morality, the conflict comes from the suspense building between Hayley and Jeff before she begins her plan. Yes, the characters mostly talk for the duration of the film, but the building tension leaves audiences wondering if they approve of Hayley’s sadomasochistic tendencies and if Jeff deserves the torture, especially as he confesses to his crimes.
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When her parents are gunned down by the drug lord Don Luis Sandoval in the first 10 minutes of Colombiana, 9-year-old Cataleya begins her journey to become a trained assassin. After escaping the gang’s clutches, she tracks down an uncle in America who begins training her to kill.
Fifteen years later, Cataleya achieves her goal, easily taking down targets given to her by her uncle. Since they’re all bad people, technically, she can still claim the moral high ground. Gunning down random criminals doesn’t heal the pain left behind by losing her parents, so Cataleya leaves behind a Cattleya flower after every hit, hoping to attract the attention of the man who stole her mom and dad from her. As the body count steadily rises, she eventually gets her wish, but not before outsmarting an FBI agent who refuses to believe a woman could possibly be responsible for such heinous acts of cruelty. Cataleya proves that women can be just as savage with a gun by taking down Don Luis and his entire operation.
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- 1577 VOTES
Prevenge
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Revenge is often about taking back autonomy or regaining a sense of empowerment, but sometimes, it’s about unhinged women listening to their malevolent unborn babies telling them to kill. That’s exactly the position Ruth finds herself in when her husband dies in a climbing accident. Navigating the death of a partner with a baby on the way is hard enough without the treacherous thoughts of a fetus compelling you to kill everyone involved in the accident.
While Ruth’s motives are nothing short of dubious, her killing spree is a grim reminder of how grief can fracture a mind. It’s also fun seeing a very pregnant woman murdering people. Especially because she takes out people committing microaggressions against pregnant women as she hunts down the people who harmed her husband.
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Many women in revenge narratives are blood-soaked and hardened by the time the last bullet flies, forever changed by the trauma that befell them. While Thana also undergoes a metamorphosis in Ms. 45, her feminine rage leads to a reawakening. Instead of falling into herself after an attack leaves her having a panic attack in the bathroom, Thana takes control through her sexuality and begins targeting men drawn to her new sensuality.
What sets Thana apart from most of the women on this list is that she doesn't necessarily lose herself because of what happened to her. She loses herself because once she starts killing, she doesn't want to stop. Thana enjoys killing men to the point that she stops targeting those willing to take advantage of her and becomes indiscriminate when it comes to picking her next target.
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