The works of Jack Ketchum, both in their literary and film adapted form, court controversy with very much the same doom laden ease that Lindsay Lohan courts courtrooms. The worlds he creates; these tainted reflections of the very one in which we all live, pay rent and die, are at once damningly familiar and bitterly repulsive.
“The Woman” (2011) is no exception, and now joins a sometimes maligned and sub-culture leaning list of his writings to have had themselves re-imagined and committed to celluloid. 2007’s “Jack Ketchum’s – The Girl Next Door” being arguably the most notorious example to date, though a raft of other adaptions now form his slate of grit-fueled morality plays.
Jack Ketchum Again Teams with Director Lucky McKee
Ketchum’s professional association with Lucky McKee, director and co-writer of “The Woman”, began with 2005’s “The Lost”. McKee optioned the work and then served as producer on the Chris Sivertson (“I Know Who Killed Me”, 2007) directed film version. McKee and Ketchum were next to collaborate on “Red” (2008), the dead dog thriller based on the authors novel of the same name, in which McKee shared his duties at the helm with Norwegian film and television director, Trygve Allister Diesen.
“The Woman”, as in the case of “The Girl Next Door”, revels in its opportunity to dishevel, uproot and kick squarely in the stomach every picture-postcard notion we ever had of the mechanics that command the ‘proper’ workings of your average everyday family. This is a film of, perhaps intentionally, annoying and unsettling contrasts. Its musical score and soundtrack batter and encroach into scenes in which they seemingly have no place. Its actors, the characters portrayed here reside almost exclusively within one family unit, obliviously slide with dull eyed resolve into their respective tar-pits of depravity, reclusive isolation, dictatorial control and cowering compliance. It is degrading of premise and awash in smirking machismo, violent and dirty as it agitates – goading its hapless viewer to react.
Though to look too deep, to expect these filmmakers to be profound and justified in every last one of their movements against the flow is to miss the audacious simplicity of the film. A production that may only have ever been meant to burrow, at most, skin deep. Just far enough to have you itching and picking at its rapidly forming scab, just enough to have its audience question; for them to see past the overly obvious brutality of its violence and gaze at the very core of the taboos that it here seeks to highlight and inflame. These the most polarizing of subjects – the likes of domestic, sexual, mental, child and even animal abuse; categories of pain toward which we can surely all show, at the very least, a detached and unadmitted empathy.
“The Woman” – A Brief Character Based Synopsis
Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) runs his family as he runs his successful law firm. Cold and jacked up on self-importance he slurps at his morning cup of ‘mud’. Smug and without even the faintest glimmer of care for social correctness, he effortlessly sails along his very own intricately self-tailored timeline.
Brian (Zach Rand), his barely teenage and hero worshiping son, sees out his hours lying about his basketball prowess and chillingly rolling out of a cocoon of his father’s making. The beast he slowly becomes a vile reproduction of the man he so admires, he that sits stoically at the head of the dining room table as most all of the family’s woman stare fearfully at their feet.
Peggy Cleek (Lauren Ashley Carter), Chris’ daughter and carrier of a tiny slowly forming secret, withdraws; recoiling into herself as her family’s dysfunction progressively reveals itself on screen. Sullen and alone she asks nothing of those charged to protect her and is provided even less.
Darlin' Cleek (Shyla Molhusen), is the youngest and perhaps most prone of the family to the poison that Chris rakes through it. Smiling and oblivious, she flits through the house; the only pure light that is still able to emit from this enforced prison of fear and degradation.
The clan rounds off with Belle Cleek (Angela Bettis), wife/ mother and long suffering compliant target of her husband’s verbal abuse and nonchalant violence. A woman who shoulders all in protection of her children, and one that reaches the very end of her tightly fisted tether when another woman is abruptly introduced and indoctrinated into the family circle.
That woman is of course “The Woman” of the films sparse title. A rag-wrapped and wild creature, that Chris happens to capture and bring back from one of his regular solo hunting expeditions. Played here with prowling, dagger eyed aplomb by Pollyanna McIntosh (9 Lives of Mara) she embodies perfectly this character of very few – the ones she does utter are indecipherable – words. The ideal bloody juggernaut foil to Chris’ cruelty and deluded arrogance she rises as a scream queen the likes of no other before.
Shock and Gore
McKee both handles adeptly and fumbles the multitude of raw emotional nerves endings that he here attempts to conduct into symphony. The tune he produces resonates, but it is bitter and at times unbearably hard on the senses. The gore filled denouement is one aspect in particular that does overstep into the contrived and hurried, the all too real specter of familial violence being one that deserved more than just the ‘Gore 101’ killings that we were here dished. Though at its final credit roll it is a film that proves a body of able and thought provoking work – one that must be seen to be disbelieved.
- The Woman
- Director … Lucky McKee (May)
- Cast:
- Sean Bridgers, Pollyanna McIntosh, Angela Bettis, Lauren Ashley Carter, Zach Rand, Shyla Molhusen
- Runtime … 101 minutes
- Monster Pictures
- DVD Release Date: Sept 30, 2011 (UK)
- Trailer: The Woman
Hari Navarro - Hari Navarro is Topic Editor for Suite 101's Horror Film section and Editor/ Writer at online horror review site, The Hell Street ...
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