I am loathe to rate The Woman as such pretends that there are other films to compare it to. The Woman is like few films I’ve ever seen and almost none your average viewer will ever attend. Much like geometry tends to separate kids who “know math” from kids who know math, The Woman is the kind of film that separates “movie fans” from movie fans.
We open with a woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) in the wild. She is more animal than human; she’s filthy, instinctive and mean. Does she even speak the language? Any language? She kills something before the opening titles. 
Meanwhile, in another film … we cut to your average suburban family: dad, mom and three kids all leading average-looking lives. After work, Dad (Sean Bridgers) decides to go hunting in the woods in back of his house. Naturally, he encounters the wild woman. Wow, she was thisclose to civilization the whole time, who knew? What suburb is this, anyway? My guess: Tarzana.
Sorry about that. Upon spying the woman cleaning herself in a stream, dad looks like Christmas came early; fittingly, he gets a Grinch-like idea. With the help of family, he cleans out the storm cellar.
“Why, dad?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Is it ever. Dad gets up early, kidnaps the wild woman and chains her, restricting all her limbs, in the storm cellar. Does he hide what he’s done? No way. He unveils her for the family with the enthusiasm of an inventor. There is stunning contrast between the mild-mannered look of the man and the hostility of his actions. The tone here is important. We the audience see the wrong, but the camera seems indifferent and his family is of two minds. Over the dinner that follows, the meek housewife (Angela Bettis) and eldest daughter (Lauren Ashley Carter) are suitably horrified while the teen boy (Zach Rand) tingles with anticipation. And slowly we realize this is going to happen; the family is going to accept a chained woman in the storm cellar. Now that is fucked up.
Did I say the camera was indifferent to her captivity? Let me revise that: early in the jailor/jailee relationship, dad makes a critical error, leaving his ring finger exposed. She bites it off, swallowing the flesh scornfully and spitting out the ring for good measure. That’s your warning. This is going to get ugly, real ugly, before we’re done. It almost feels as if Lucky McKee asked himself, “what’s the most disturbing thing I can put on screen for my budget?”
Most movies are tangled balls of yarn that slowly unravel over the course of three acts. This is especially true of horror films, where the villain and objective become clearer as the film goes on. The Woman does no such thing; each new piece of information we learn complicates the matter, tightens the knot. The film starts simply enough: a wild woman out hunting. By the time we’re done, it’s hard to say exactly how we feel about what we saw. Some of the inevitable violence is justified, some isn’t, and some is just bizarre. I haven’t felt quite the same queasiness upon leaving a film since The Blair Witch Project. And, like Blair Witch, The Woman will certainly have its staunch supporters and angry foes. I know this much: film advances as an art form with directors like Lucky McKee, not David Dobkin.
Rated R, 101 Minutes
D: Lucky McKee
W: Lucky McKee, Jack Ketchum
Genre: Subversive
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: True fans of film
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Type A folks
