"That is not civilised behaviour...."

[philosoraptor42]

The Woman (2011)

I've now seen three films by Lucky McKee: "The Woods", "May" and his short film for Masters of Horror "Sick Girl". I have to say that I reckon this latest offering is probably the best so far. This is apparently based on the third in a series of books by Jack Ketchum of the which the second has already been (apparently fairly badly) adapted as "The Offspring". The synopsis on imdb seems to treat this as a follow-on from that movie. However, within the movie itself Lucky McKee actually makes the origins of the eponymous Woman more mysterious, with the suggestion seeming to be that she was raised by wolves. (In "The Offspring" she is part of a tribe of cannibals who randomly live in the woods.)


There's a fairly slow build up to begin with, but anyone who's seen the trailer knows that the woman we see living like an animal in the forest is eventually going to find herself chained up in a basement. However, while I felt impatient on first watch, a second watch reveals that this early section is already giving (to a greater extent than I realised on first watch) plenty of clues as to the problems with this family.

I absolutely have to comment on the fantastic acting skill on display here. The children are all perfect for their roles. Angela Bettis is brilliant as ever. There's a lot of emotion conveyed through the eyes from all the actors here, but Angela Bettis can't help but shine, even when playing someone so restrained. Her husband is played by Sean Bridgers in a way that seems similar (though rather more subtle) to the evil mayor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I haven't seen Bridgers in anything before, but a major credit seems to be for Deadwood which I may check out at some point.) Bridger's character decides to bring the Woman home so that he can "civilise her". He treats it like its a duty for them as a family. A really interesting aspect of this film is how we begin with the Woman seeming like the bizarre aspect and the family seeming basically pretty ordinary, but yet the whole central scenario is enough to show that there is something dodgy about this family.

Lucky McKee has littered this film with indie music, partly because the elder daughter is listening to it quite often, but also because it takes us off guard. It's not really my sort of music, but it works fine in the film. The one negative I would have to point out in regards to this film is that, in order to build mood, McKee sometimes uses a sort of collection of scenes put together like a montage, sometimes involving scenes that have happened before or sometimes just to put certain ideas in our head (for example showing a wolf and a baby in the scene where we first meet the Woman). I'm not sure that all these mood pieces work quite as well as they are supposed to. Though I was only really concerned about these earlier on in the film and may be that I was just getting used to the style the film is using. Still, I don't remember finding it quite so jarring when this sort of technique was used in "May".

Still, once the film got going I was totally pulled in, albeit with my hands often clasping at the edges of the sofa. Oddly enough, though there's some gory bits, the hardest parts to sit through don't involve gore at all. Still, no matter what happens in the film, even when I was absolutely horrified, I felt it was all worth it by the end. The film ties together very nicely and anything causing you to furrow your brow seems to have been intended to do so.

It might be said that the film becomes so extreme by the end that the idea of praising it for promoting women's rights is similarly a little far fetched. This is a film with subtle performances, but it's certainly not a subtle film. Still, horror often works by taking real life terror and taking it to extremes and "The Woman" has made some very interesting choices of subject matter. With the central premise being someone trapped in a cellar one might think that there wouldn't be much scope. After all, "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" seemed to struggle somewhat to keep things active and from The Woman's IMDB page they recommend "The Loved Ones" which seemed to become a string of different horrific ways to torture the captive victim. "The Woman" doesn't work like either of those films because the plot is not tied to the captive. There are things happening outside of the cellar that are just as important to the plot, independent of the Woman.

This is a very interesting film and I find it remarkable that it's wasn't a higher profile release in cinemas. Really well acted and original. Admittedly it's horrible. I've got two other rather unpleasant films I'm expecting to watch soon: "The Kill List" and "I Saw The Devil" which I think will both turn out to be very much entries in the "horrible" genre. However, The Woman is a great entry in the genre of horribleness and if you are in the right mood, I suspect you'll love it as much as I did.

A+




John Carpenter's "The Ward"

I'd heard a lot of bad stuff about this one. However, I'm a John Carpenter fan. I made the effort to check out every single one of his films. (Even his made-for-TV film about Elvis. Not bothering to review that one. Kurt Russell is great in it and if you really like Elvis you might really enjoy it. Personally, I'd rather have skipped it.) Going into this my thoughts were "well it can't be worse than that remake of Village of the Damned" and, thank goodness, it wasn't. *phew!*


Okay I don't know how to give people a truly informed view about whether they ought to see this film or not without some pretty heavy hints about how it might end. As such, I'm going to put a separate paragraph after the score for this movie where people can see those hints if they want to. In the meantime I'm going to skirt around this rather large elephant in the room and try to give a nice and genuinely spoiler-free review.

The film opens with a mysterious ghost-like figure entering a room in a Ward, seemingly without opening the door, and killing one of the patients. Looks like we've got a ghost story then.... What follows is a pretty awesome opening credits scene with what seems to be a combination of medieval torture images and depictions of barbaric treatment of the mentally ill. All of these images are shown being shattered like glass with some pretty cool music in the background. Clearly this isn't a film where we should expect a fair representation of the mental health profession then.... So anyway, we are introduced to our protagonist outside the ward running through some trees and then setting fire to a house. She is spotted by the police and yet, rather than receiving the due process you'd expect for an arsonist, she seems to be booked into a mental health ward straight away. Very strange indeed.

None of her fellow patients seem entirely sure why they are there and certainly most of their conditions seem pretty subtle. However, there is a mysterious figure who seems to appear every now and then and disappear just as quickly. A girl with a twisted and mutilated face. Why is she there? What does it all mean?

Well, it's not a spoiler to say that things are not all as they seem. Even the identity of our protagonist is somewhat mysterious since she apparently has no memory of anything before she burnt down that house. She doesn't even seem to know why she did it. In any case, all the bizarre elements in the film do come to be explained eventually. That said, I'm not entirely sure that ECT used on patients while they are fully awake is explained. That could be a Hollywood error. Patients receiving electroshock treatment would normally be sedated first.

The acting often seems a bit over the top and I could easily imagine the main doctor character being played in Sam Neil's typical hammy style (as seen in "In The Mouth of Madness"). Still, there's nothing exactly wrong with any of it. I will admit that the film is a bit meandering and the unrealness of the scenario is rather distracting. Still, this isn't a bad film at all. I found it interesting to watch and the scary bits genuinely made me worried. Overall I'd say that this was a pretty solid film, but I think it had potential to be better. The issues with the ending, as much as I want to defend them, don't exactly count in the film's favour. Overall your mileage may vary on this one, but it's far from John Carpenter's worst and considering some of the rubbish that makes it into cinemas I cannot understand those who said this didn't deserve a cinema release.

C+


*Heavy hints about The Ward. Possibly spoilerish. Be warned! Heavy hints below.*

.......... Did you see the warning above? Read it again if you missed it.

Okay, so, it's called "The Ward", so this is about mental health. What's the most common mental health problem in the movies that you can think of?

... Yeah, that's the one. Guessed why some people were upset when that issue was revealed?

The next hint will be quite a concern for those of you familiar with the film in question. Have you seen the film "Identity" starring John Cusack and Ray Liotta? Yeah? Did you hate it? Well I did. I couldn't stand that movie. When it reached the end and explained that things weren't as they seemed I was seriously gutted.

Now the thing about "Identity" was that the person suffering from the mental illness in question was sitting in a chair receiving hypnosis the whole time. That's not what is happening in The Ward. The ward is real, the doctors are real, but how the patient is experiencing her surroundings may not be as it seems. Most importantly, the reason WHY our central protagonist has been seeing things the way she has is much clearer in The Ward. In Identity, the central character imagining everything in terms of a motel (or whatever) was just bizarre.

So yeah, the mental health problem of the central character is a MASSIVE cliche. The way this cliche is revealed kinda makes you feel like the entire film has been cheating you somewhat. However, there is a good explanation and, contrary to what one person told me, it doesn't make the mistakes that "Identity" did.

So that's the end of my heavy hints.

*End of heavy hints about The Ward. Possibly spoilerish. Be warned! Heavy hints above.*

See that warning above? That's a spoiler warning. The section just above this line is potentially spoilerific. Be careful!
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