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| Images courtesy of Arrow Films |
Horror novelist Jack Ketchum’s name
and influences are all over modern cinematic horror, from his horror novel Off
Season being a reworking of sorts of the original story behind Wes Craven’s
The Hills Have Eyes involving a cannibalistic tribe of savages wreaking
havoc on unsuspecting bystanders to the 2007 adaptation of his psychological horror
novel The Girl Next Door. A
couple of years later Ketchum’s follow-up novel to Off Season called Offspring,
concerning a group of feral cannibals who have developed their own language and
terrorize a group of local vacationers, was made into an independent horror
film by Andrew van den Houten starring Pollyanna McIntosh as the female tribe
leader. A mean-lean little number
produced by Moderncine, it and The Girl Next Door further cemented
Ketchum as a formidable horror name to be reckoned with.
Enter May horror director Lucky
McKee who started working on an adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel Red in
2008 before being replaced by Trygve Allister Diesen. Despite being burned by the experience, that
didn’t stop McKee from collaborating with Ketchum who jointly produced a 2011 sequel
novel and film to Offspring entitled The Woman with Pollyanna
McIntosh reprising her role as the feral cannibal woman. Back in 2012, independent releasing label The
Collective released the film on blu-ray disc before Arrow Video saw fit to
remaster the film in 4K and re-release it on their own limited edition blu-ray
set. Not long afterwards, the film
dropped on 4K digital, prompting the question when an actual 4K disc would
happen. Now in 2024, the boutique label
have gone above and beyond the call of duty by repackaging their previous release
of the brass-knuckled The Woman now on 4K UHD disc with its cruel and
gnarly predecessor Offspring also newly minted on 4K disc.
Starting with Offspring, a
random woman and her family is cannibalized by a group of feral furred tribesmen
led by a ruthless feral woman. Not long
after, ex-cop George Chandler (Art Hindle from The Brood) is on the
crime scene much to the chagrin of fellow police officers and soon our story
winds up in the Northeastern US/Canadian border where a vacationing family with
an infant child and young son are hiding out from their mother’s boorish alcoholic
ex-husband keen on breaking his restraining order. As with most films involving this setup, we’re
introduced to this nice and unassuming family so the feral cannibals can
terrorize and proceed to commit unspeakable atrocities against them. Think of it as The Hills Have Eyes by
way of the rapey Chilean horror Hidden in the Woods. Children are killed, a feral male gimp of
sorts is used as a pin cushion in between being sexed with by fellow
tribeswomen and there’s some kind of subplot involving the cannibals putting sharp
metallic dentures in their mouths so they can gorily bite women’s crotches
because why not?
After the antics of that needlessly
mean and nasty number, the saga shifts gears with Lucky McKee’s co-written
novel and film of The Woman which finds our feral cannibal tribe leader
played by Pollyanna McIntosh alone and fending for herself, tending to a wound
sustained on the last movie. As she’s
wading through the woods on her daily routine of hunting and surviving Mick
Dodge style, a wealthy country lawyer and family man named Chris Cleek (Sean
Bridgers) discovers her while hunting and decides to capture her with the
intent of “civilizing” her. To his picture-perfect
all-American family’s shock and horror including his wife Belle (Angela Bettis
from May) and daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), Chris introduces
them to her tied up bound by her hands and feet to the wall so she can’t attack
them or escape. Intending to clean, care
for and domesticate her much like a house pet, the family dynamic starts
growing more twisted, particularly when young son Brian (Zach Rand) and
eventually Chris start secretly abusing the woman, leading towards an eventual
invariable path to bloody vengeance.
Starting out on feral dialogue free
grounds of the woman in her natural habitat before Lucky McKee sneaks us into
the pretty-as-a-picture perfect world of Todd Solondz which looks so chipper on
the outside but underneath disguises a terrible secret. At once an insight into what it must be like
to be a captive caged animal suffering at the hands of their captor as well as
an insight into male aggression as the perfectly constructed patriarchal world
of Chris Cleek starts to come apart through his own volition, The Woman thematically
is all over the place. While ideologically
interpretive with regards to the dark satire of the nuclear family dynamic, The
Woman mostly succeeds as a slow-steady shocker with its atrocities
carefully poised so we’re in shock but not to the degree that we abandon the
picture. Unlike Offspring which
reveled in senseless nastiness, The Woman has a head on its shoulders
and more than a few points to make about the eternal battle of the sexes.
While a third film was written,
directed by and starring Pollyanna McIntosh entitled Darlin’, it departs
from the Jack Ketchum source material and therefore has been excluded from this
Arrow Video 4K UHD collection. One of
the few times they’ve thrown in an additional bonus feature film in one of
their blu-ray-to-4K upgrades, this release won’t win over new fans of Offspring
but it will help fans of The Woman further contextualize the sordid
cannibalistic saga. For those keen on
upgrading their copies of The Woman, it represents a welcome upgrade but
I highly doubt people will be buying this set for its predecessor. All in all, another solid release from Arrow Video
who have paved the way for two of Bloody Disgusting Selects’ original films in
lovingly restored special editions too good for either of these bloodthirsty
gut crunchers.
--Andrew Kotwicki
