Retrospective: Straw Dogs

The events of the third act of Straw Dogs are perceived in radically different lights by the film's protagonists. David (Dustin Hoffman) believes his wife is callously asking him to offer disabled country boy Henry (David Warner) to a band of West Country psychopaths trying to break into their home. His wife Amy (Susan George), having been raped by the home invaders, is desperate to save herself and sees Henry as a worthwhile sacrifice. Neither are terribly sympathetic, but David comes off the worse for being a husband his wife won't tell about her rape.

David spends the whole film treating Susan like a child, shooting down her attempts to engage with his work, reprimanding her for having ordinary human emotions, reminding her of the sacrifice he made by fleeing America in the Vietnam era to live in her hometown. He shows Henry more empathy in the third act than he ever expresses for Amy. When Amy asks him to confront their cat's possible murderers, David loses his cool in seconds. The brilliant awfulness of the rape scene comes from their terrible marriage: Amy starts imagining that her rapist is David, both because that's safe and familiar, and probably because David isn't terribly different from her rapists. A brilliant piece of horror: the other side of the Deliverance coin.