The Woman Review

• 25th Oct 2011

The Woman is a low-budget horror from director Lucky McGee and co-writer Jack Ketchum that – despite the hype generated by one audience member’s (scripted?) walk-out at its Sundance screening – relies more on psychology than gross-out to get its reactions. Unfortunately, despite strong performances from a talented cast (especially Pollyanna McIntosh in the title role and Sean Bridgers as the deranged dude trying to ‘act’ normal), this approach takes the film only so far.

A sort-of sequel to Ketchum’s Offspring, which was about a clan of Maine cannibals, The Woman never references its own back story – so it can be viewed as a stand-alone film (and probably ought to be, given the excoriating reviews garnered by the film version of Offspring). A hunter encounters The Woman in the woods, where she appears to be living like an animal. He spends a good long while perving at her through his rifle sights, and then returns later on to drag her off to imprisonment in a cellar. Doting family man and respected member of the community Chris Cleek cheerfully announces to his wife and stunned brood that The Woman is their ‘new project’.

Alas, Chris’ sunny demeanour masks a demented psycho, and he and his abused wife and their disturbed children are not up to the task of ‘civilizing’ The Woman. The longer she remains tethered in their cellar, the weaker the family’s already feeble grip on normality becomes.

However unpleasant the premise, The Woman is not, much to this reviewer’s untold relief, torture porn. Terrible things happen, both to The Woman and because of her, but it is not until the rather rushed denouement that the viscera start to fly. But nor is this a fresh, intelligent treatment of the war of the sexes in the vein of the thematically similar Black Snake Moan. In fact, The Woman feels downright old-fashioned – like something rescued from the video nasties era and given a polish. It’s not as smart as it obviously thinks it is.

Gender politics have (for most of us) moved on from the tired old “women = nature/all men are rapists” lines, and the exposé of the rotten teeth behind suburbia’s tight smiles has almost become a cliché. This is a shame, because The Woman needed to offer something original to rise above being a solid, yet disposable, cheapie B-movie.

Clare Moody