2011
101 minutes
rated R
by Scott Mendelson
Lucky McGee's The Woman, based on a novel written by McGee and novelist Jack Ketchum, is at once a probing bit of social commentary and a relatively dry horror picture. It is easy to respect and admire due to its thesis, while it must be acknowledged that it gets where it wants to go pretty quickly and spends much of the rest of the film biding time. The picture does build tension through silence, and its performances are spot-on throughout. But its intentions are not subtle and McGee and company plays their hand by the end of the first act. As a thoughtful and pointed examination of how the patriarchy operates as a tool for gender domination, as well as a look at how society plays 'Pygmalion' to women as a whole, it is worth a look and worthy of merit. But it works better as a thesis statement than as a piece of genre entertainment.
