THE WOMAN (2011)

Studio:   Arrow Video
Director: Lucky McKee
Writer:   Jack Ketchum, Lucky McKee
Producer: Andrew van den Houten, Robert Tonino
Stars:    Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis, Lauren Ashley Carter, Carlee Baker, Alexa Marcigliano, Zach Rand, Shyla Molhusen

Review Score:

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Summary:

A fractured family gradually unravels after the father secretly imprisons a feral woman under the pretense of civilizing her.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After cleaning her stomach’s stab wound in a river, the feral cannibal Woman kills a wolf and sleeps in its den. The Woman dreams of a wolf comforting a bloody infant in a cave.

Attorney Chris Cleek attends a backyard barbecue with his subservient wife Belle, teenage daughter Peggy, troubled son Brian, and youngest daughter Darlin’. Secretly pregnant with his child, Peggy ignores her former flame Roger. While practicing basketball free throws to impress his father, Brian ignores a little girl being bullied by three bigger boys.

While hunting in a forest near his countryside home, Chris spots the Woman bathing in a river. Realizing the Woman is feral, Chris returns home and has his family clean an outside cellar. Chris later goes back to the woods and captures the Woman.

Peggy’s geometry teacher Miss Raton gradually comes to suspect that Peggy is pregnant. Upset when she beats him at basketball, Brian puts gum in his classmate Cyndi’s hairbrush.

Chris shackles the Woman in the cellar. The Woman bites off Chris’ ring finger and swallows it in an act of defiance. Chris beats the Woman and later deafens her with a gunshot to teach her obedience.

Chris brings the family to the cellar to show them the Woman. Chris explains that they are going to civilize the Woman and everyone has to help with her care while keeping her existence a secret.

Darlin’ plays her radio to befriend the Woman. Chris slaps Belle when she questions if they really should be holding the Woman captive.

The Woman and Belle exchange a knowing stare while Chris bathes the Woman. But instead of rebelling against her husband, Belle points out that the Woman’s restraining bolts are loosening. As his behavior grows increasingly disturbing, Brian discards a lit cigarette on the Woman while he and Chris repair her restraints.

Peggy watches in shock as her father painfully hoses down the Woman with a power washer. The Woman senses that Peggy is pregnant. Peggy turns off the water to stop the Woman’s pain.

Brian spies on Chris when he rapes the Woman during the night. Aware of what is happening, Peggy cries herself to sleep.

Believing he is home alone, Brian masturbates while torturing the Woman by twisting her nipple with pliers. Having stayed home from school due to morning sickness, Peggy stops her brother. The Woman acknowledges Peggy again.

When Chris comes home from work, Belle tells him what Brian did. Chris casually dismisses Brian’s actions. Enraged at Chris’ misogynistic enabling, Belle threatens to leave with the two girls while leaving their “rapist son” with Chris. When Belle warns that Chris could go to prison just for something going on in their dog kennels, Chris mentions “anophthalmia” in reference to Belle’s secret shame. Chris beats Belle unconscious.

Miss Raton unexpectedly comes to the house to tell Chris that she believes Peggy is pregnant. Chris manipulates the discussion to insult Miss Raton before beating her. Brian helps his father take Miss Raton captive while Chris demeans Peggy.

Chris and Brian imprison Miss Raton in the dog pen. A feral woman named “Socket,” who was born without eyes to Chris and Belle but subsequently raised like a dog, emerges and mauls Miss Raton to death.

Peggy frees the Woman in order to stop her father and brother. The Woman murders Belle and eats her face.

The Woman brutally kills Brian. The Woman then disembowels Chris with her bare hands and takes a bite out of his heart.

The Woman feeds the rest of Chris’ heart to Socket, whom she takes on as a pet. The Woman has Darlin’ suck blood off of her finger. With Socket and Darlin’ on either side, the Woman walks away from the house. Peggy eventually follows at a distance.

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Review:

The Cleeks looks like an average suburban family, even though they live in a rural countryside home. Husband/father Chris works as an attorney at an office in town. Wearing a shaky smile to mask her meekness, housewife Belle would fit right in as June Cleaver’s neighbor. Peggy mopes in a hoodie and earbuds like a typical teenager. Adolescent son Brian shoots hoops in the yard. Youngest daughter Darlin’ cutely plays K-pop while licking cake batter off mom’s baking beater.

You’d never know there’s a feral woman chained in the family’s cellar, and all of them are in on the secret.

‘The Woman’ is the only known survivor from a clan of cave-dwelling cannibals last seen terrorizing a family in the 2009 thriller “Offspring” (review here). Chris stumbled upon her while hunting, imprisoned her in shackles, and compelled his submissive wife and children to participate in a perverted pet project to “civilize” an animalistic human.

For an ordinary family, the prospect of caring for a chained captive would come as a revolting shock. But the Cleeks already sit on a powder keg of problems preoccupying clouded minds. Peggy doesn’t know how to handle her unexpected pregnancy. Chris regularly renews Belle’s subservience using his fists. Watching his father berate, bemoan, and beat the ladies in his life has brewed enmity inside Brian that he’s anxious to finally externalize. Then there’s the unspoken matter of another sinful shame hidden in the dog pen outside.

The fuse of dysfunction has been burning for as long as they’ve been a family. The presence of the Woman has only accelerated an explosion poised to irrevocably alter The Cleeks.

Co-writer/director Lucky McKee’s dark drama may have a singular title in “The Woman,” though it is very much an ensemble movie. Its strange setup walks a tightrope over inconceivable implausibility. But the film’s stunning starkness never falters because these particular actors impressively use every inch of each environment, internal emotion, and external conflict to put full minds, bodies, and souls into completely convincing characters.

Perfect casting trickles down from the top. It’s atypical to put someone in the role of a domineering patriarch whose physical presence isn’t instantly identified as an alpha male archetype. Perhaps that’s part of why Sean Bridgers works so well as Chris, adding an inferiority complex underneath composed aggression. The smaller stature with subdued smolder containing Chris’ controlling personality curiously comes across as infinitely more dangerous than the relatively tame threat of a muscular meathead with a mustache.

Angela Bettis and Lauren Ashley Carter delicately balance seesaws that never tilt an inch. Belle and Peggy effuse demure complacency while concurrently projecting rebellious resilience held in reserve for when respective time-bombs stop ticking. Both women lay backstories bare using dour expressions, yet never over-explain by dropping eyes or frowns too low.

“The Woman” chews on challenging commentary about toxic masculinity and antiquated gender roles through a story that’s unflinchingly bitter, tense, and brutal. And yet even when the film feels like it forces you to witness terrible acts as though toothpicks are tenting your eyelids, so much of the styling seething beneath the surface is sold with subtlety.

Drops, not a downpour, spin Brian deeper into his father’s footsteps. We see Brian dismissively failing to act when bigger boys bully a little girl. We see Brian exact revenge on a female classmate who beat him at basketball by putting bubblegum in her hairbrush. Explanations sit out in the open, but come via moments that don’t hit the audience like condescending freight trains.

When Chris shows his family the Woman for the first time, Peggy asks through a slightly dropped jaw, “what is this?” It’s telling that the three words she chooses are not “what is that?” or “who is this?” Peggy isn’t necessarily interested in the obvious, which should be the person in chains before her. Peggy instead addresses the insanity of the situation, whether anyone hears her or not.

Meanwhile, Brian ogles the Woman with the same pubescent fascination Ralphie directed toward his Old Man’s leg lamp. For him, the Woman unmistakably remains an object.

Deliberate details continually build out the weird world of “The Woman,” often in intangible ways. It’s not a coincidence that the Woman bites off Chris’ ring finger. Outfitting Chris in a tailored suit and nice watch while having his wife hand roll his cigarettes also says something specific about him as a person.

“The Woman” captures an awful atmosphere with such striking vitality, you can be convinced that an outwardly unassuming man could hold a woman against her will while his family stands silent. Not solely out of fear, but because their skewed views have been warped by ugly conditioning. To them, such circumstances are part of everyday normalcy, which makes the haze over everyone’s heads all the more horrifying.

Even an anachronistic use of the word “strumpet” intentionally evokes a strange streak suited to the unusual tone. The same goes for scoring certain scenes with a pop rock soundtrack in lieu of orchestral music. Rooting itself in relatable realism gives “The Woman” the feel of an ordinary movie when its story is anything but.

It’s haunting. It’s disturbing. It’s uncomfortable without being unbearable. “The Woman” gets to be all of these things through the powerful strength of exceptional writing, acting, mood, and direction. This is visual storytelling at its finest, even if the horror story being told is a difficult one to stomach.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score: 90

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