A reappraisal was made by Carol J. Clover in the third chapter of her 1992 book "Men, Women, and Chainsaws". Clover notes that she and others like her "appreciate, however grudgingly, the way in which movie's brutal simplicity exposes a mainspring of popular culture". Clover further argues that the film's sympathies are entirely with Jennifer, that the male audience is meant to identify with her and not with the attackers, and that the point of the film is a masochistic identification with pain used to justify the bloody catharsis of revenge. Clover wrote that in her opinion, the film owes a debt to "Deliverance". The British feminist Julie Bindel, who was involved in pickets outside cinemas in Leeds when the film was released, has said that she was wrong about the film and that it is a feminist film.