The Woman

I found the music way more disturbing than anything in the film. The levels of the music were way too loud compared to the rest of the sounds in the film. I really wanted to enjoy this but the music ruined it. Seems like the director owed someone a favor or they held his family captive unless he put this music in his movie.

I am not sure if this is a dark comedy, og a thriller? Its not a horror! The film gets more and more sick, to a point where you have to laugh. Its well made. The acting is okay. The music seems to be very loud compared to talking and other sounds.... I found it entertaining, and I still think about it, here two days after watching it :-)

Gory in parts, but some cracking performances by the actors, and though a slightly predictable plot, it kept me at the edge of my seat nearly all the way through. A powerful performance from Pollyanna McIntosh. She stole the movie. She has just the right amount of masculine feral power mixed with feminine vulnerability to make her character truly believable and you root for her and the final denouement all the way through the film. The air of menace mixed with devastating elements of bullying and cruelty by the sadistic father and his effect on the psyches of his family are well handled and plausible.

Highly recommended.

The Woman arrives on DVD and Bluray amidst almost a year of controversy and festival runs. The picture was accused of misogyny, horrific violence, and bad music. Two of these three things are true. Let's just say certain musical selections don't really make sense in a film of this subject, and the violence will surely have innocents running for the door. "The Woman" sports a deeply feminist view upon domestic violence and the domination of man over women in contemporary society. However the film does not focus it's killer's eyes on the disturbing, horrible men featured here. A crucial moment underlines the idea that we all have the power to change a lurid situation drastically, and if you do not seize that opportunity, you are just as guilty as an aggressor. My heart broke for all the women in this film, including the titular cannibal. They endure some of the worst male behavior ever seen in a suburban, or civilized, society and the violence that embeds the last half hour is blunt and brutal. Director Lucky McKee injects so much energy into this film, but he doesn't glorify the violence. It's the audience's choice, myself included, to crack a smile when certain characters get what's coming to them. Prepare to be made uncomfortable, disturbed, scared, and finally short of breath by The Woman.

I don't write a lot of reviews but this film gained a lot of publicity after some guy at Sundance walked out (or got kicked out) for complaining about the violence and misogyny in it. He was probably right to walk out, but did so for all the wrong reasons. I didn't find the movie particularly violent for the horror genre. What it was lacking was better writing and character development. So adding the review to give people a better idea of what they were getting, since it's presently sitting at an 8.5 with no other reviews.

The mother and kids of the family and even "the woman" were fairly well acted and developed, although I find it hard to believe in any teenagers these days that will just do whatever their father says. Unfortunately, the father, teacher, and some other small parts seemed to be more caricature than character. The fact that it was not working was obvious, although how much of it can be blamed on bad writing, bad acting, or bad directing may be debatable. Unfortunately, the father is in almost every scene, so this caricature becomes the centerpiece that the rest of the film revolves around.

There are some other problems with sound choices and some of the worst use of music I've heard in any film. Almost every time one of these alt-pop tunes came on all I could think was "Really? They're using this to set the mood?!" I think only once during the course of the film, did a song come on that I thought "Oh, this almost, sort of works". Most of these songs would probably be fine on their own, but didn't seem to fit the mood of the film at all.

In addition occasional bad directing, lighting, and editing choices left me not being able to see or understand what was happening at certain points in the film or understanding why they edited the same shots cutting back and forth at times. This is most obvious in the opening scenes where they are showing the girl raised by wolves. It's a pretty common theme that's been done dozens of times before. Yet here they spend too much time on it, without actually developing it at all. Just a lot of jumpy cuts going back and forth to state the obvious, to the point that I started fast forwarding to get to the credits and see if the film was actually going anywhere. The credits really shouldn't be more interesting than the opening scenes. I would have much rather seen more development on the father's character and what his motivations were in these opening scenes. We never really get any of that, and as I said earlier, he's pivotal to the way every other character acts and reacts during the course of the film. Other than those complaints, the overall technical aspects of the film were pretty professional for an indie film.

The biggest problem for me though, was lack of any kind of suspense buildup. Something that is ever present in the best of horror films, and usually at least some hint of, even in a mediocre horror film. I was never really left wondering what was going to happen next, things just happened and we watched, but didn't feel much of anything for the characters involved.

I respect the director's decision to do something a bit out there in terms of film norms these days, and the ending might give you a bit of a chuckle, if you hang in there that long, but in the end found it to be a rather low end mediocre movie, so 5 out of 10.