This bizarre and brutal horror film featuring a Josef Fritzl-style storyline adds a misjudged extra-horror factor to its final minutes

• Peter Bradshaw
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 September 2011

1. The Woman
2. Production year: 2011
3. Countries: Rest of the world, USA
4. Directors: Lucky McKee
5. Cast: Angela Bettis, Carlee Baker, Marcia Bennett, Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers
6. More on this film

Josef Fritzl meets Tobe Hooper in this bizarre, icily constructed horror film which brutally hammers home its satirical points but adds a misjudged extra horror-factor into the mix in the final 10 minutes. Sean Bridgers plays Chris Cleek, a prosperous provincial lawyer, who within the confines of his idyllic family home, is a horrendous abuser and wife-beater. While hunting in the woods he discovers a semi-naked woman, entirely feral, living wild in the undergrowth; he makes her a prisoner and sexual plaything in his toolshed, for the amusement of his equally loathsome teenage son. The movie skilfully persuades you to believe in this woman, and therefore to be horrified at her fate, but I found that the film's rigour dissolved in the final act.

confines : granice

dissolve : zanikać, rozpływać się

feral : powtórnie zdziczały

loathsome : wstrętny

plaything : zabawka

rigour : rygor, reżim, dyscyplina

toolshed : szopa

undergrowth : poszycie leśne

• nast. »