Director/Screenplay/Photography – Giorgio Serafini, Producers – Giorgio Bruno, Phillip B. Goldfine, Daniele Grammaccia, Salvatore Lizzio, Pete Maggi & Giorgio Serafini, Photography – Jose Zambrano Cassella, Music – Sandro Di Stefano, Visual Effects Supervisor – Antonio Giordano, Production Design – Oswaldo Medina. Production Company – West Arts/Cine 1 Italia/Explorer Entertainment/BIC Production/Smokehammer Media/Prime AD AB/Soundford Limited/Voltage Pictures.
Cast
Jemma Dallender (Belle), Natalie Burn (Kay), Rachel Rosenstein (Angela), Anna Shields (Lory), Anthony Belevstov (Mr. Black), Michael Santi (Mr. Red), Fernando Louis Soto (Mr. Blue), Justin Fischer (David), John Hardy (Belle’s Father)
Plot
Belle and three girlfriends head away to her family vacation home by the lake. For Belle, there are sad memories due to the fact that her father had a fatal heart attack there just after he saved her from drowning. As they settle in, the home is invaded by three armed men with painted faces who imprison and terrorise the girls. Thought shot and left for dead, Belle makes an escape and returns, determined to exact justice.
Giorgio Serafini is a director who was born in Italy, raised in Belgium and then moved to the USA where he became a director. Serafini has made various films in the thriller and drama fields. These include genre entries such as Don’t Let Me Go (2013) about a journey through a haunted forest; 200 Degrees (2017) with Eric Balfour imprisoned in a heat kiln with the temperature being turned up; Flashburn (2017), a reality-bending SF film where Sean Patrck Flanery plays an amnesiac virologist imprisoned in a warehouse; the revenge film Unhinged (2018); and the children’s film Pegasus: Pony with a Broken Wing (2019).
The Executioners starts out as a standard Home Invasion piece where the four girls are terrorised by three men, each with their faces painted a different colour, who burst into the house. It soon becomes apparent that The Executioners is an I Spit on Your Grave (1978) wannabe – the infamous horror work where Camille Keaton is brutally raped multiple times and then staggers away to take revenge on her abusers. Not too long before The Executioners was made, the original was remade as I Spit on Your Grave (2010) featuring Sarah Butler. The homage is made direct in the casting Jemma Dallender, who replaced Butler as the lead in the first sequel to the remake I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013), as the lead here.
Natalie Burn being menaced by the mystery home invaders
I am not a fan of watching films about women being raped, no matter whether they take revenge on the men afterwards or not. It makes for unpleasant viewing. And The Executioners gave me a sinking feeling once I realised that I was having to sit and watch another of this type of film. To its credit, The Executioners is fairly tame in this regard and spares us having to watch protracted torture and sexual assault scenes. It is film that wets its toe in the pool of its raw and brutal predecessors but crucially fails to push the envelope in any way in terms of its violence.
The playing out of all of this, the eventual comeuppance against the men and fairly much anything that is going on in the film has a by-the-numbers and derivative handling that left me largely indifferent to the situation. These kinds of rape-revenge films are founded in a primal red-bloodedness – they make you feel a sense of violation and then champion the victims as they enact vigilante justice in revenge. This does occur but the twist at the end of the film turns things on their head to no real purpose.
