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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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The Woman (Film)

by Anthony O'Connor | August 16, 2011 17:51 | Edited August 16, 2011 17:52

For those who can stomach the depraved action, this dark and superbly performed horror flick is totally worth it.

The Woman is the brainchild of notoriously unflinching author Jack Ketchum (Off Season, The Girl Next Door) and cult horror director Lucky McKee (May, The Woods). Created in a rather unique way - with both Ketchum and McKee co-writing the screenplay and book simultaneously - this, it should be noted, is not a film for the faint hearted.

 

The story takes the last remaining member of the cannibal tribes from Ketchum's earlier Off Season and Offspring universe: the titular Woman (played with audacious intensity by Pollyanna McIntosh), and adds a twist to the proceedings. Instead of spending ninety minutes butchering unwary tourists, The Woman is caught by the demented patriarch of the Cleek family, Chris (Sean Bridgers), who intends to "civilise" her. This process begins with Cleek chaining her in the backyard shed and ends...well, let's just say that things get a whole lot messier. The film takes us on a twisted journey, giving us a number of different perspectives along the way. These include The Woman, Chris Cleek, Belle Cleek (Angela Bettis) - the mad wife - and the doomed Cleek children, Brian and Peggy. The film drip feeds us the backstory of the family and the continued degradations that The Woman is subjected to along with a couple of nasty twists that we won't spoil.

 

The fact that we fear for The Woman - the same character who performed such atrocity in Offspring - is testament to the movie's knowingly subversive nature. Be warned that this is not a crowd-pleasing story. It features violence, rape and utterly depraved madness. The Woman is a dark, grim, occasionally blackly satirical look at what happens when we try to tame the untameable. Stellar performances by McIntosh, Bridgers and Bettis anchor the narrative, and combine to give us the best Ketchum movie property thus far. Nasty but worth it.