The Woman

Lucky McKee’s attempted feminist subversion of co-scriptwriter Jack Ketchum’s nasty pulp novel makes for a confused, controversial horror movie. It must be stressed that the most extreme sexual violence perpetrated against Pollyanna McIntosh’s captive feral woman by suburban lawyer Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) and his teenage son Brian (Zach Rand) remains off-screen. Their hateful actions are also contextualised as those of a controlling, sociopathic patriarch and his misogynist-in-training son. What makes these scenes so distressing, however, is that their attempts to ‘civilise’ the chained, mute woman of the title always emphasise her helplessness. Once she is spread-eagled in the basement, there’s little that Cleek’s cowed wife, Belle (Angela Bettis), or timid teen daughter, Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), can do to help. Any female dissent is quickly slapped down. Equally dubiously, the film’s final act resorts to extreme cannibalistic gore and myths about ‘women who run with the wolves’, in an ill-thought-out attempt to salvage some kind of liberationist message. McKee has never fulfilled the promise of his debut feature, ‘May’ (2002), and on this evidence he seems unlikely to.