ROSARIO DAWSON DESCENDS INTO RAPE REVENGE

Rosario Dawson says Descent’s harsh subject matter about rape isn’t for everyone but should be seen.

Rosario Dawson stars in Descent, the disturbing and graphic story of a college woman who gets revenge on her date rapist by having him raped by a man.

It’s certainly not an entertaining romp at the movies, but Rosario says she felt the need to bring awareness to an ongoing violence against women without sugar coating it.

“It wasn’t like this burning desire to put myself through or even anybody we cared about or audiences necessarily through it but it’s real and it’s honest and it’s a reality. I felt really excited actually that there was a concept, a way that we could this, that could breed great conversation. We need to create a discussion for this. There’s never enough, we can’t bring this up enough because it’s happening in such disgusting numbers. One in four women will be raped, killed or abused in this country and that needs to stop. And they’re not women’s issues. It’s not just to make a movie that women are going to see. We needed to do it in a way that was gonna include men as well.”

Rosario was exposed to the abuse of women at a young age as her mother worked for women’s shelters and has experienced unwanted sexual behavior herself but insists it’s a serious issue that affects everybody.

“It’s not gonna be about me. It’s not gonna be about any individual. We’re not doing it about any particular one person’s story. We’ve come across a couple of things but we weren’t gonna make it personal like that. We wanted to kind of make a lot of things about this ambiguous. And I think it really works. It was horrifying for me to watch it. It was horrifying for all of us to do it and we warn people before they go and see it. But it’s also really amazing how much the affect is. It really humanized a lot of us who are part of this experience because it brought up a really deep conversation that most of us don’t ever want to talk about.”

Descent which has The 4400 star Chad Faust playing the rapist is the feature debut of co-writer and director Talia Lugacy who made several films while attending New York University film school, many of them starring Dawson.