The Woman - DVD

Movie: Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) is amazed when he discovers a completely feral woman (Polyanna Mcintosh) in the middle of the woods during a hunting trip. Chris is completely fascinated by the woman and makes a mad decision. He wants to take the neglected woman home and turn her into a civilized member of society. In fact, he succeeds in capturing the woman, who resists with all her might, and puts her in chains in the basement of his house. And he is also able to convince his initially shocked family of his, in his eyes, pious plan. But not only Chris himself seems to be more and more obsessed with the wild woman. His son Brian (Zach Rand) also takes on increasingly strange and even sadistic traits, which makes mother Belle (Angela Bettis) extremely worried. Then, when a teacher of daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter) shows up as the young girl is acting more withdrawn by the day, events threaten to escalate.

The Woman is a quasi-sequel to the Jack Ketchum film adaptation Loot Greed, in which Polyanna Mcintosh had previously played the character of the nameless woman. Director Lucky McKee was so taken with this mysterious character that he was able to persuade Ketchum to work together to develop his own story for The Woman. The result is a mix of social satire, torture horror and survival thriller. It is above all the literally wild performance of Polyanna Mcintosh and the superficial good-humanity of Chris, which stands in stark contrast to this, but hides abysmal sadism, that make this film a successful representative of the genre.

While some of the more gory moments are executed very effectively, McKee doesn't always manage to strike the right tone in other scenes. For example, the satirical aspect of the story sometimes seems a little too forced and overdone, and the suspense suffers as a result. Especially towards the macabre finale the whole thing seems to get a bit out of hand for the director. That's a pity, because in the first third of the movie the director takes American bigotry to court with such a biting intensity that it's just a joy to watch. But at some point McKee shifts the focus from satire to horror, from intelligent suspense to sadistic brutality. And that ends up hurting the overall impression a bit.

However, while not all aspects of the film are convincing, the bottom line is that The Woman offers good horror entertainment that fans of director Lucky McKee and those viewers who already enjoyed Polyanna Mcintosh in the much weaker Prey Greed might especially enjoy. Worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The filthy colors in which the film is bathed reflect the bloody goings-on in the film very vividly. Otherwise, the very clean picture scores with good overall sharpness and decent contrast. The audio is dominated by dialogue for long stretches, but every now and then the music, well-implemented ambient sounds and effective sound effects provide pleasant movement in the surround channels. Good.

Extras: The DVD has a few more extras worth watching in addition to the trailer for the film. It starts with a worth seeing Making of (approx. 23 min.), which takes an entertaining look at the making of the film. The whole thing is a promo making of, but it's pleasantly commercial-free and really informative. The short look behind the scenes, on the other hand, is much more like a typical promotional film and also revisits some moments from the making of. Furthermore, there are a few dropped scenes, as well as a short, very bizarre animated short film by Zach Passero, which was produced by Lucky McKee. Good.

Conclusion: The Woman is a bizarre mix of horror film and social satire that gets a little out of hand in the final third, but overall offers genre entertainment well worth watching. The DVD is technically on a good level, the bonus material is clear, but worth watching. The Woman is neither the best work of Hal Ketchum, nor of Lucky McKee. But nice horror fun offers the film all the time and is therefore also: Recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp