Texas Frightmare Weekend ’11: The Woman – Review

Reviews, Theatrical Reviews, Top Story

Audiences have become more conservative in their film-watching, and this film challenges all current social norms.

If you’ve been following Lucky McKee’s new film The Woman, chances are you’ve heard about the ranting and raving man at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, who declared it offensive and demanded it be banned. The film honestly couldn’t have gotten better press than that. When a film elicits that strong of a reaction, it becomes required viewing for genre fans, shooting to the top of their must-see list for the year.

The Woman is based on the third novel in Jack Ketchum’s Dead River series, which follows a primitive cannibalistic clan as they find their prey up and down the East Coast. The second novel Offspring was made into a film that went direct to DVD in 2009, and featured more graphic and gory depictions of the clan. Director Lucky McKee has collaborated with Ketchum in the past and wrote the follow up to Offspring with him, with the intention of adapting it into a film. In true Lucky McKee style, The Woman focuses less on the graphic horror of cannibalism and more on the realistic horror of the situation.

The opening shot very much sets the tone for the rest of the film: a lush, serene forest surrounds a quietly flowing creek, until the bloodied torso of a woman comes directly into the forefront of the camera. Danger lurks in even the most seemingly calm of places. The Woman lives in the caves here, finding food whenever she can.

Meanwhile, the portrait of a healthy American family lives nearby in a secluded farmhouse. Chris Cleek (Sean Bridges) is a lawyer, and is successful enough to support his wife Belle (Angela Bettis) and their three children, Peggy, Brian, and little Darlin. One day while out hunting, Chris spies The Woman bathing in the creek. After instructing his family to clean out their cellar, he returns the next day to capture The Woman with the intention of reforming her. He chains her to the walls in his cellar with her arms outstretched, but she is anything but vulnerable. Each member of the Cleek family is instructed to help care for their new “project”, and with each day she is trapped there, the family disintegrates more and more.

First, Peggy appears depressed and withdrawn at school. She wears baggy clothing and runs to the bathroom frequently, claiming she is sick. Brian is withdrawn as well, but he begins playing pranks on the girls in his class, acting out as a typical boy would. Five year old Darlin (played with perfection by local Dallas girl Shyla Molhusen) is still at home with Belle during the day and luckily seems unaffected. In her young wisdom, she attempts to make The Woman feel more comfortable by going out to the cellar, sitting on the door, and playing her favorite music for her on her plastic boom box. Quickly though, Chris’s sociopathic behavior comes to the forefront and the family is fighting for their lives.

After the tirade at Sundance, The Woman has been branded with many labels including misogynistic and offensive. The content is most definitely disturbing and not for the casual horror fan. The film features domestic abuse, rape, torture, and even ends with a feeling of hopelessness (stay after the credits though). The women in the family are Chris’s victims and they are the ones who suffer the most. But they also go on a journey that results in them becoming brave enough to stand up to Chris. Even still, there is no one particular antagonist in the film. She may be physically restrained, but The Woman is stronger than Chris.

Under McKee’s careful direction, every actor in the film brings their character to life onscreen. Sean Bridges is sickeningly vile as Chris, his performance delving deeper into madness as the film progresses. Angela Bettis (a McKee regular) is effortless perfection as a wife trying to please her husband while at the same time trying to protect her children from him. Pollyanna McIntosh reprises her role of The Woman from Offspring, and she has perfected it. She makes sounds that sound impossibly inhuman and her unflinching GLARE is chilling.

As a woman myself, after watching the film I struggled trying to figure out what my final impression would be. The film is violent and shocking and even with sitting through the credits, getting to see the hopeful short afterward starring Darlin, and EVEN with sitting through a Q&A with Lucky McKee, cast, and crew, I walked out of the screening still shaken by what I had seen. The next day I couldn’t get the film out of my head. It’s definitely not for everyone and I would have a hard time giving it an open recommendation, but if you choose to seek out this film and watch it for yourself (it will get distribution this fall), it’s not a film that you will soon forget.

McKee said in the Q&A that The Woman is his attempt to bring American horror film to the level of current foreign horror film. Audiences have become more conservative in their film-watching, and this film challenges all current social norms. I applaud Lucky McKee for his courage to make a film as daring as The Woman.


Director: Lucky McKee
Notable Cast: Angela Bettis, Sean Bridges, Pollyanna McIntosh
Writer(s): Jack Ketchum, Lucky McKee

Jenny is proud to be the First Lady of Inside Pulse Movies. She gives female and mommy perspective, and has two kids who help with rating family movies. (If they don't like 'em, what's the point?) She prefers horror movies to chick flicks, and she can easily hang with the guys as long as there are several frou-frou girlie drinks to be had.