The Woman Blu-ray Review
This features a woman in red, but it's not the color of her dress.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 24, 2012
What does it say about us as a species that there's such a thing as torture porn? What does it say that this
unabashedly
violent, usually completely disgusting genre (at least to some of us) manages to rake in sizable box office returns and
seems to do especially well
on home video releases? (Could it be people are actually a little ashamed to be watching this stuff, and so prefer to
see it
in the privacy of their own homes?) The sociological implications are troubling, to say the least, but they're beyond the
ken of this reviewer. It frankly just baffles me that people would ever want to see people degraded, disemboweled,
sliced, diced and manhandled to the point of being little more than bloody pulps. But there is obviously is a sizable
fanbase for this content, and many of them will probably love
The Woman. There have been a number of films
which
have attempted to couch their torture porn roots in highfalutin' concepts, like the recent
A Serbian Film. But
The Woman doesn't even have that film's (questionable) level of pretentiousness. This is a film all about
misogyny
which attempts to counteract its first 9/10ths by delivering a supposed comeuppance in its climactic showdown that
does
little to balance the scales, other than spraying both sides with about equal amounts of guts and gore. With a frankly
ridiculous narrative style which dances just this side of self-parody (which would have been a better choice, all things
considered) and one completely disturbing and disgusting sequence after another, there's little here other than shock
value, and even that shock value doesn't offer any real
shock other than that engendered by disgust.
The Woman could almost—
almost—be seen as flirting with satire, a la
Married With Children, as it
introduces a
Cleaver-
esque family headed by attorney Chris (Sean Bridgers), properly submissive wife Belle (Angela Bettis), randy son Brian
(Zach Rand), troubled
teen daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), and sweet kid Darlin' (Shyla Molhusen). All is not picture perfect,
however, and Chris fears he's
losing his all-important control over his supposed charges. That all changes when he stumbles across a feral woman
(Pollyanna McIntosh)
while hunting one day, captures her, and drags her home, chaining her up in his barn as a "prize" he wants to share
with his brood. (In the
somewhat comical department, writer-director Lucky McKee pronounced 'feral' as "fear all" in the making of
documentary accompanying the
feature on this Blu-ray, perhaps indicative of the intellectual acumen of the "creative" team behind this travesty.)
As distasteful as
The Woman undeniably is, there are actually a few sparks of saving grace scattered here and
there, if one is prone
to look hard enough for them. Director McKee actually has some visual flair and directorial craft at his beck and call, with
a number of really
well staged scenes on display throughout the film. But it's craft ill suited for this smarmy and unseemly content, pretty
window dressing
surrounding a rotting corpse, as I mentioned in another recent review for similarly gussied up trash. What
really could have
ultimately saved this film would have been more of its occasional sense of humor about itself. After Chris' finger is
bitten off by the feral
woman, he exacts revenge in a typically gruesome manner, after which he calmly asserts, "There, I feel better about my
finger now." If only
The Woman had had the courage to pursue those black comedic elements to their furthest potential there might
have been more to
recommend about this piece.
It must also be admitted that at least a couple of times in this fairly gory enterprise McKee actually errs on the side of
caution, deciding not
to actually show some violence which is only alluded to. Therefore a really disturbing scene with Brian, some needle
nosed pliers and the
feral woman actually manages to deliver some real chills, simply by dint of the fact that it
isn't incredibly graphic.
As any seasoned
horror director will tell you (at least any
old school seasoned horror director), it's often best
not to show
everything you have
the ability to, for the audience's imagination will certainly make things scarier and more horrific than outright depiction
ever could.
Unfortunately McKee falls into the trap of so many young horror directors by wanting all that blood and guts up on the
screen, virtually
dripping into the audience's lap.
By the time the film cartwheels into its hyperbolic denouement, when one of Peggy's teachers shows up at the farm
about a possible
pregnancy scare involving the teen (could Chris be involved?), the movie just descends into pure silliness, albeit (of
course) completely
gruesome silliness. It's rare these days for labels or PR firms to send "swag" with their releases, but The Collective
sent along a little
"bonus" item with
The Woman, a little rubber heart covered with fake blood inscribed with "She'll rip your heart
out," a major clue to
one of the film's bloodier moments. The fact is, for a lot of people not especially fond of this kind of film, they may want
to rip their own
hearts out (or at least their eyes) so they don't have to watch something as downright trashy and disgusting as
The Woman.
The Woman Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
As should no doubt be obvious by now,
The Woman is most definitely not my cup of tea. I know this kind of out
there horror flick appeals
to many, but I'm simply not one of them. I actually might have liked (or at least tolerated) this film if it had simply gone
totally over the top and
delivered some laughs along the way, as it at least
tries to once or twice. All of this said, it can't be denied that
McKee has a fair amount
of craft, and a lot of the scenes here are staged with some visceral flash and flair. The film was subject to a supposed mass
walkout at
Sundance which some have alleged was staged simply to further the PR for the film, but there's little doubt that a lot of
people aren't going to
have the stomach for something this patently distasteful. If you
are one of those folks who likes this kind of
material, the presentation
here is well above average and shouldn't leave you anything major to complain about. For all others, stay far, far away.
