No taming this one (The Woman, 2011)

The Woman, 2011, directed by Lucky McKee, streamed on Prime Video, 3.5 stars.

A deranged dad captures a feral woman in the woods, shackles her in the cellar and orders his family to help train her into civility. The plan goes awry, a couple of other disturbing family projects are revealed and mayhem ensues.

This indie horror film is particularly twisted, and I enjoyed just about every minute of it. It had me a bit discombobulated at first because I didn't understand what this wild woman was all about. The film opens with The Woman lurking in a river with a machete near a cave opening where we hear wolves howling. We later see her catching a fish with her machete and eating it raw as deranged dad drops a net over her from behind. But that's all we know about this woman covered in dried blood and mud who only utters guttural sounds.

I was fine just going with it. As we moved into the story of the psychopathic dad and his oppressed family, the captive's backstory really didn't seem integral to the plot. Turns out, I learned later, The Woman is a sequel to a 2009 film, titled Offspring, about a tribe of feral woods dwellers slaughtered by townies. The Woman, apparently, was the lone survivor, and I guess the beginning of this movie would have been clear had I seen the previous one. There was, in turn, a 2019 sequel titled Darlin', teased by a post-credits bit in The Woman.

I liked The Woman quite a bit. This movie is engaging and maddening and horrific and frightening, everything director Lucky McKee intended it to be. I'm in no hurry to catch either of the other two films in the trilogy. Maybe later I'll dive into this series from the start. But for now, The Woman delivered a nice gut punch just fine on its own.

 

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