Double Review Tuesday: The Woman (2011) & The Woman by Jack Ketchum / Lucky McKee (2010)

 

 

THE WOMAN

A man brings home a feral woman he finds out in the woods while hunting. What unravels is beyond description. 

I had several movies lined up for movie night but Mrs Bax0jayz decided to put this on instead. It had impressive reviews, so it must be a movie on the higher ed of horror, right? 

From the start, there was something off. There was this long meandering intro of some woman who seemed troglodytic running through the woods. It isn't until she pulls out a nicely crafted knife that you realize that this must take place in fairly recent times. After that unnecessarily long and drawn out opening which shed little to no light regarding THE WOMAN, the scene cuts to a party in a yard in currents times. You see ordinary people doing ordinary things that you might see at a summertime pool party. It focuses on the Cleek family. The pretty mid-teens daughter ignoring advances from a boy. The barely teenage son who is obsessed with basketball. The adolescent daughter who wants to make people feel better with kisses. The attractive and attentive wife. The powerful lawyer husband, a respected pillar of the community. 

 

Or so it all seems. You are puzzled trying to figure out how the opening sequence will line up with this new information. The next morning, all-American dad Chris Cleek heads out hunting and sees this feral woman in the wide and decides this isn't safe. For whom? I don't know. But he hatched a plan to fix the situation. He returns to her cave and traps her the following morning, then bring her home. 

 

He's helping her alright. He has her chained down by the ankles and wrists in his storage cellar. While this is developing, there seems to be side stories going on. The teen daughter, Peg, is becoming withdrawn and is sick all the time. The son, Brian, seems to exhibit some sadistic tendencies. And Belle, the wife who stands by her man, seems to be getting pretty tired of his shit. So when Chris unveils his new pet to the family, the response was mixed at best. 

 

The rest of the film is a confusing downward spiral as the the family secrets are exposed and their lives all unravel, right up to the odd and befuddled ending. So much is thrown at you in the final ten minutes that you are left wondering what you just saw and what did it all mean? We found this movie to be a puzzling disappointment. 

Find it on AMAZON

 

The Woman

by Jack Ketchum / Lucky McKee

A man brings home a feral woman he finds out in the woods while hunting. What unravels is beyond description.

After watching the movie Mrs Baxojayz asked, "Is there a book for this? Can you read it and tell me what it was SUPPOSED to be about?" So I looked it up and found out some information. To be honest, this is a bit confusing. The movie is based on a series books by Jack Ketchum, however, this book is the third in the Dead River Series. Why didn't they start with previous material before jumping the gun with this? Then we could understand her backstory. More on that later. 

 

The book was everything that I hoped it would be. It explained everything that the movie just didn't bother addressing. So we should start from the beginning. The meandering beginning in the movie is supposed to be an explanation regarding the backstory of THE WOMAN. You are supposed to surmise that she was a part of a feral, cannibal clan of humans who were stalking the Northeast of the USA and had tangled with law enforcement and were all wiped out except for the woman, who was wounded on her side. That was when Cleek saw her wandering about in the woods. 

 

The book explained WHO was the father of Peg's baby. The book explained Ms. Raton's motivation to "help" Peg. The book explained everyone's thought processes all along the way, even THE WOMAN. The book explained what the weird humanoid creature in the barn was. The book even explained what the ending was all about. 

 

While the book was far more satisfying than the movie, it was possibly even more repellent and I was hoping that the cops would arrive to kill everyone except the Cleek daughters. THE WOMAN was as disgusting a villain as Chris Cleek was, in my opinion. 

 

You can get the book on AMAZON