THE WOMAN
dir. Lucky McKee, 2011
United States. 101 min.
In English.

THURSDAY, 10/12 - 10 PM
FRIDAY, 10/20 - 10 PM
MONDAY, 10/23 - 10 PM

The last survivor of a cannibalistic cave-dwelling clan from Ketchum’s earlier work OFFSPRING is hunted and captured by a country lawyer in THE WOMAN, co-written by Ketchum with the film's director Lucky McKee (MAY, ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE). Imprisoning the eponymous feral woman (Pollyanna Mcintosh, returning in a powerhouse performance) in the family's cellar, the all-American dad (a loathsome Sean Bridges) commences a program of domestication, attempting to tame the ferocious female while turning his family into accomplices to her subjugation . THE WOMAN is an unbearably tense, gruesome, provocative and disturbing experience, whose scenes of cotidian domestic abuse will haunt and outrage the viewer as much as its scenes of savage animalistic violence.

“THE WOMAN picks right up where 2009’s OFFSPRING (also an adaptation of a Jack Ketchum book) left off. It’s a totally different beast though, and it is as much infused with Ketchum’s DNA as it is with McKee’s. That should come as no surprise at all since they collaborated on both the book and the screenplay. Ketchum’s predilection for tales of the inherent savagery in man, and McKee’s for the role women play in our patriarchal society, come to a head in the brutal and visceral masterpiece they created together.

What differentiates both adaptations, though, is that, unlike OFFSPRING, THE WOMAN plays with the notion of who the real monsters are. Now, “the savages are not the monsters” might seem like a tired cliché, and to a certain extent it is, but in the hands of McKee and Ketchum it becomes fresh, even poignant, and regains its status as an uncomfortable universal truth. This becomes even more true to the extent that THE WOMAN is not so much about the divide between civilization and savagery as it is about how men try to “civilize” women or to expel the savagery perceived within them.”  -Simon Cogen, Horror HomeRoom