I'd like to apologize for yesterday's post, since I WON'T be reviewing Ti West's The Innkeepers. Not today at least. Schedule conflicts and heading to the awesome Wilmington Panic Attack prevented it (though Panic Attack was pretty awesome), but I'll review the flick at a later date.
Well, now that we've gotten that out of the way...
A very dysfunctional and damaged family is met with a surprise one day, as the father has drugged and chained up a feral and violent woman found in the forest. He aims to civilize and rehabilitate her, much to his wife and daughter's disapproval. Over time, this new addition to the "family" may tear them apart, and in more ways than one...
It was inevitable that I'd run into a film this year that was almost too cruel to recommend, and Lucky Mckee's The Woman holds that distinct honor. I was actually pretty shocked to discover that this is a sequel to the Ghost House-released project Offspring (by author Jack Ketchum), but I don't believe you need to see the previous film to understand anything here. Sharing a lot in common with last year's The Girl Next Door (also by Ketchum), but nowhere near as infuriating as that film was, this really is the definition of a "love it or hate it" film.
Judging by his work on May, Mckee's always had a keen eye for casting (nice to see the supremely underrated Angela Bettis work with him again), and everyone in here seems based in reality rather than fiction, save for Carlee Baker, who I thought was a tad bit too "pretty" for her role as the older daughter's concerned teacher. I would love to see Pollyanna McIntosh in more work. She owns a face you won't soon forget and she's instantly memorable as the title character, and there are so many more layers to her character than we may first realize. Sean Bridgers' performance as Chris Creek is the very definition of a piece of shit, but in a good way. His son is also a near clone of him and could be the most evil little bastard I'll encounter until the very end of my list (crap, spoiler?).
Like May, the film doesn't particularly scream out at you, even with some incredibly tense and sadistic moments intact. Its choice of score is also very odd, choosing to focus on adult alternative songs for the most part. The film's not shy about its very pro-feminist message, though that could certainly turn some viewers off (it almost did me in with certain scenes). And I'm sorry to repeat myself, but man was this hard to watch at times. The last fifteen minutes had me feeling rather ill, to the point where I wasn't sure if I even wanted to give this a proper review.
So yeah, I like this one. I probably shouldn't have, given its very tough-to-watch final act, and the very real, cruel feeling you get from watching, but sometimes we want that from our horror films. I'm interested to hear what others thought about this, so if you're reading and have seen The Woman, please let me know your thoughts.
Tomorrow, we get a double dose of foreign flicks yet again with THEM and RAMMBOCK.
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