I think I'm going to give up on trying to plan ahead in my movie reviews. Every time I do, something happens and I end up changing my plans. In this case, I was all ready to start slowly going through the rest of the Insidious films and tackling the tower of DVDs by my desk... and then I hear that horror writer Jack Ketchum died this week. So I figured I should review a film adapted from one of his books, which in this case is the only one I've seen so far (even though I've read several of his books) - The Woman.
Chris Cleek is a country lawyer who seems to have the perfect family - his wife Belle, his teenage daughter Peggy, tween son Brian and youngest daughter Darlin'. He is handsome, charming and has many friends. But there's a much darker side to Chris that we start to discover when, while out hunting one day, he discovers and captures a feral woman. He brings her back to his home and chains her up in the barn, before telling his family that it is their job to "civilize" her. Chris is, in fact, a misogynistic wife-beater and abuser, who has even made Peggy pregnant through sexual abuse, and it is clear that he just wants the Woman as another sex slave. Even worse, his son Brian is following in his father's footsteps. The only hope the Woman has to escape is Peggy, who despite her fear of her father still wants to try to prevent her father from abusing anyone else... and perhaps the Woman is Peggy's only hope for escape as well...
The Woman is directed by Lucky McKee, who is both known for having done several adaptations of Ketchum's works, and for being a feminist filmmaker. From that and from the synopsis above it should be pretty obvious that The Woman is a film with strong feminist themes, and for the most part, it manages to get those themes across with few problems (and I'll get to them shortly). There's the key theme of how this outwardly respectable and charming man, a pillar of his community, is, in reality, a monster, being compared with the feral and cannibalistic Woman. Who is the real monster, the savage? Well, obviously, it's Chris Cleek, and maybe the film does lay it on rather thick, especially with a revelation at the film's climax that goes over the line into absurdity, but this isn't just man V woman; it's also nature V nurture - the Woman, for all her feral and cannibalistic ways, is still a better person than the "civilised" man.
The Woman is also a sequel to one of Jack Ketchum's earlier works, The Offspring, which was also made into a movie, Offspring. The story concerns a clan of feral cannibals who live in the woods and caves of Northeast America, capturing and eating any campers and tourists unlucky enough to stumble into their territory. At the end of Offspring, only the Woman is left alive, which leads her into this movie. So, of course, this film contains some pretty gruesome and splattery scenes of violence and cannibalism - although not as many as you might think because there's also a lot of violence - both sexual and otherwise - directed against the Woman by Chris and, in one particularly uncomfortable scene, Brian Cleek (and that scene should be uncomfortable, considering Brian's age, even though in reality we actually see very little of it).
I really like The Woman, both as a straight horror movie and as a feminist piece, but there is one scene in it that I take great issue with. At one point in the film, Chris and his wife Belle are washing the Woman while she is chained to the barn wall, and our attention is drawn to the fact that one of the chains holding her is coming loose. Belle also notices this, but rather than keeping quiet about it she alerts her husband, thus preventing an early escape for the Woman. The film then seems to mark Belle as deserving of the same "punishment" as her husband for this, for not helping her fellow woman... and oh boy is that problematic. Belle is quite clearly, from the moment we meet her, a woman who has been beaten into the dirt by her husband. She is as much a victim as Peggy and the Woman - maybe even more so because she's too terrified of her husband to dare do anything that might cause him a problem. Her acting out of fear should not condemn her to the same fate as those who rape and torture and kill, and I think the film made a misstep in doing that. There's also the character of Peggy's teacher, who seems to be set up to be a potential saviour but really just gets a variation of the Scatman Crothers Special and becomes another woman to be tortured at the end.
Special mention has to go to Pollyanna McIntosh, who plays the Woman. She has no lines (well, none in English) and communicates entirely in grunts and gestures throughout the entire film, and yet comes across so strongly that it's incredible. Writing a feral cannibal murderer to be sympathetic might be difficult enough, but to portray that character successfully is another thing entirely. Angela Bettis, who is in several other Lucky McKee films, plays the role of Belle and is quite effective as well as an abused, beaten-down wife trying to survive and protect her children, even if she can only do so in the smallest ways.
The Woman won't be for everyone, with its themes of abuse and the extreme gore in the film's climax, but it's definitely a film I think people should at least try to watch - or at least get hold of the trilogy of books - Off Season, The Offspring and The Woman - that Jack Ketchum wrote.
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