The idea behind A Vigilante may explore one extreme version of what imagined justice for domestic violence survivors might look like, but it's rooted in real circumstances: the criminal justice system all-too-often fails victims when they seek help. An ABC news segment reported that 70 percent of domestic violence calls do not end in prosecution. Not only that, for many victims who end up killing their abusers, they are doomed to spend the rest of their lives in prison for defending themselves. In California, a prison study found that 93 percent of the women who had killed their significant others were abused by them. In New York State, that number is 67 percent . In some cases, like Marissa Alexander's , she was sentenced to an extreme prison sentence for simply firing a warning shot into the ceiling to scare off her abuser, even though no one was injured. This reality makes the idea of vigilante justice seem not just appealing, but necessary.