The Woman

A family in the Northeast captures Wolf Lady and Dog Girl

A lawyer in northwest Massachusetts (Sean Bridgers) likes to hunt near his rural homestead in his spare time. After finding a feral female living in the woods (Pollyanna McIntosh), he imprisons her in his underground shed. How will the rest of the family react? Angela Bettis plays the housewife.

"The Woman" (2011) is a quirky backwoods drama with amusing bits mixed with some thrills and gory horror. It’s a sequel to “The Offspring” from two years earlier, but I’ve never seen it (and it’s not necessary to do so in order to understand this one). A second sequel came out in 2019 called “Darlin’,” directed by McIntosh (the wild lass).

The set-up is good and the production is professionally made, plus the flick’s witty and the statuesque Pollyanna has a certain appeal in a ferocious way. It’s a slow-burn about a dysfunctional family and a seemingly genial man being a misogynistic sadist who can’t handle a strong woman.

That’s all good but, unfortunately, the climax is too over-the-top (in the manner of Tarantino) and leaves a bad taste; for me anyway. There’s a hint of humor so you can’t take the proceedings too seriously, but with themes of slavery, cannibalism, torture, domestic violence, rape, incest and murder, the flick just doesn’t know when to stop. “Cat People” dealt with some of these way back in 1982 and was significantly more effective and entertaining.

The film runs 1 hour, 42 minutes, and was shot in northwest Massachusetts with the school sequences done in Montague.

GRADE: C