The Woman (2011) review

(7/10)

Too twisted for me too enjoy fully, but still has an artistic charm that pulls me to it.

PLOT:Christopher Cleek (Sean Bridgers) is an "average" guy who works for a law firm and has a family of a wife, two daughters, and a son. One day when he goes hunting, he comes across a beautiful feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) bathing and the stream and decides to trap her and lock her in the basement. He forces his family to take part in helping "civilize" her, but is that all he wants, or is there something more to it? To add to the mystery, each of the members of the family, minus the youngest, is hiding something. It's a strange idea for a plot executed to the most twisted yet unpredictable degree.



ACTING:The acting is pretty good. It isn't the best I've seen, but it gets the job done pretty well. The shiners in here are Pollyanna McIntosh as The Woman, Lauren Ashley Carter as Peggy Cleek (the older daughter), and Zach Rand as Brian Cleek (the son). I didn't think Bridgers did that good of a job in here, for his acting was a little flawed; he didn't convince me enough until the ending scene. On the other hand, I give respects to McIntosh for looking so bad-ass (and beautiful) most of the time just by looking calm, and I give credit to Carter because I felt the pain her character was experiencing just by looking in her eyes.

SCORE:The score is mainly made up of indie songs by unheard of bands that sound similar. It reminds me how McKee used the score in Roman.

EFFECTS:I thought, for one, that the effects looked extremely fake. All of the blood and gore looked just as you would see them in a generic zombie film: gruesome but extremely fake-looking.



OTHER CONTENT:This movie was directed by Lucky McKee of May and Roman, and was originally written by splatterpunk author Jack Ketchum of The Girl Next Door. With these two strange, twisted minds putting a film together, you could expect something bizarre. McKee has a certain, strange direction style that I just can't seem to understand; it's modestly simple yet bizarrely twisted altogether from the writing to the editing. I just don't seem to understand him. Ketchum is just that twisted and I like to see what kind of stuff he can put out. I thought this one, however, went a little too far for comfort. This film isn't just a horror; it's split between a gruesome horror and a disturbing family drama. The family drama wasn't as twisted as the horror part, but they both came together to make something unique and, well, twisted. I do appreciate the family drama in here for what it's worth, for it enthralled and shocked me to see everything go down and figure out the dysfunctional family's struggle. Though this was twisted, it did have a bit of an artistic charm that drew me into it. It is brutal, profane art, but it goes just a little too far for me. Also, it reminds me too much of The Girl Next Door. It makes me feel like Ketchum copied some of the basic idea from there and stuck it in here. It overall left me with a bit of a guilty, disturbed feeling that I didn't like. I give the film some respect, but not too much.

OVERALL,a good horror/drama with a strange plot, very good acting, indie score, fake-looking effects, an enthralling family drama, twisted horror, and an artistic charm, but it went too far for me, reminded me to much of the writer's past work, and left me with a bad feeling at the end.