False Positive

 

False Positive (2021)

Dir. John Lee

Written by Ilana Glazer and John Lee, story by those two plus Alissa Nutting

Starring Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux, Pierce Brosnan

 

I like Broad City quite a bit, so when I heard co-star Ilana Glazer had a horror movie, you bet I was on-board. Frankly, I’m more bullish on comedians making horror movies than the artistes who we have lately allowed to run roughshod with the genre; at the very least, they tend to have a more innate desire to entertain. I mean, it worked out pretty well for Jordan Peel, right? If top-tier satirists are feeling drawn to the horror genre, I’m at least game for it, even if horror-comedies have a pretty uneven track record (and anyway, it’s not like normal horror is exactly famous for its consistent high quality). Plus, we can always use more movies written by women; though horror has never exactly lacked in female representation on-screen, it’s rarer that a female star also serves as co-writer, so that’s a nice bonus.

The pedigree is worthy, then (along with Glazer, we have director John Lee, a longtime trench worker in weird comedy like Wonder Showzen, Xavier: Renegade Angel, and The Heart, She Holler, along with episodes of Broad City and Inside Amy Schumer and such, and also director of PEE-WEE’S BIG HOLIDAY). This time, however, the resulting movie leaves a little to be desired. FALSE POSITIVE (which is not something this review will be) tells the story of Lucy (Glazer), who, along with her vaguely-defined husband Adrian (Justin Theroux, noted former Jennifer Aniston boyfriend, and hey, he was also in MULLHOLLAND DRIVE!) is having difficulty conceiving. Somewhat reluctantly, she goes to see Adrian’s old med school professor, leading fertility expert Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan, Treehouse of Horror XII) who quickly manages to induce pregnancy, but at the cost of the fact that he’s, like, openly evil, and so Lucy begins to suspect that something sinister is afoot, which would certainly explain all the ominous music on the soundtrack.

This is, then, pretty obviously a riff on ROSEMARY'S BABY, if by "a riff" you mean "the exact same movie except with iPads and a way lamer ending." It correctly understands that ROSEMARY'S BABY is about subtle subversion of female bodily autonomy --an important topic which is every bit as relevant today as it was 1968, sadly—but in trying to articulate that theme, it simultaneously lays it on too thick and too tentatively, emerging with a “message” movie whose message is artlessly blatant but also lacks much bite. It grasps the idea of womens’ autonomy being maliciously undermined in small ways, but the only thing it can think to do with that concept is to run through little sketches which demonstrate it. The doctor addressing her husband first and only then turning to the person with the womb. Her theoretically-supportive boss constantly asking her (the only woman at the firm) to pick up everyone’s lunches. Her friends patronizingly blaming her anxieties on “Mommy brain.” And so on, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, each time turning to us to say “See? See?” until at the end the villain walks out and says “My evil plan was to maliciously undermine womens’ autonomy!” and the movie says “What we have just seen is a movie exploring the idea that womens’ autonomy is maliciously undermined” and we roll credits.

Which is not in itself inherently a problem. When you’re as mad as this movie is, sometimes a direct approach is exactly what’s called for, a righteous hammer rather than a delicate ballet. Thing is, though, for a movie this absurdly on-the-nose, it’s also weirdly shy. The story keeps insisting on hints: small moments, insinuations, careless slights and minute faux pas. But since it is also absolutely petrified by the very notion that anyone watching might miss the point for even a single second, it insists on giving you the same tiny hint over and over until it’s sure you’ve got it. Which is to say, every single scene in the movie –every single one-- involves someone saying something subtly disempowering while Lucy looks quietly hurt. Little things, but little things which contain a clear message. All frustrating and –for many women-- probably extremely relatable slights which sketch out an invisible conspiracy every bit as malicious and far-reaching as the Satanic one in ROSEMARY’S BABY, but far more mundane in practice: just a loose affiliation of good ol’ boys who, despite their pretense to the contrary, will never, ever take women seriously. But if the movie convincingly depicts these little moments where the mask slips, it also never escalates into bigger moments, basically just repeating the exact same scenario with the exact same spooky insinuation for the entire none-too-hurried 92 minutes.

The result is basically MICRO-AGGRESSION: THE MOVIE… but played as if it was THE OMEN, complete with bloody hallucinations and ominous images set to music just this side of THE SHINING. That’s a disastrous mismatch, because it refuses to allow us to simply empathize with Lucy over how rude everyone is to her. Everyone is kind of a prick constantly, but the movie’s tone insists that this is a matter of apocalyptic evil rather than a perpetual annoyance. And the very mundanity of the situation makes that hard to square, despite the insistent score (from Yair Elazar Glotman and Lucy Railton, making their feature debut) and the moody, dread-soaked camerawork (by Pawel Pogorzelski, Ari Aster’s guy).

It simply pushes too hard with too little, making it impossible to stay on its side. Whereas ROSEMARY'S BABY was content to let the little red flags add up and speak for themselves, FALSE POSITIVE is functionally incapable of letting things speak for themselves, and therefore strikes a tone of absolutely -- dare I say?-- histrionic panic right from the get-go, making its equivalent emphasis on little red flags completely self-defeating. Despite the quietly mendacious insinuations the movie clings to, there’s no room at all for ambiguity; even if we ignore the aggressively spooky tone and miss the opening few minutes (which flash forward and reveal this will come to a bloody end*), Brosnan is practically twirling his mustache from his first scene. He’s obviously a villain, the film is practically screaming at us that there’s evil afoot, and it assures us this will end in blood from the very start, so we don't ever experience the genuine horror of tumultuous self-doubt that might actually strike a nerve (though obviously that's where the script wants us to go), and instead this lady just seems like a chump for taking the world’s bullshit and looking secretly wounded over and over. She’s so mopey and passive in the face of the movie’s screeching proclamations of doom that eventually we stop feeling sorry for her and start to feel like she’s less a victim and more a passive-aggressive doormat. Which is not the direction you want to push your audience when the whole point –I mean, like, the entire point—is to generate sympathy for pregnant women oppressed by the patriarchy.

I think this is possibly one of those "visual metaphors" you always hear about

And yes, that is the point, and it’s not a point the movie is going to let you miss. Like so many A24 movies, FALSE POSITIVE feels unreasonably anxious to dispense with the dull requirements of narrative and genre content so it can get down to the business of loudly declaiming about the ISSUES, about the PATRIARCHY, about how SCIENCE IS A MALE-CENTRIC MALE-OCRACY AND NATURAL CHILDBIRTH IS THE ONLY WAY A REAL WOMAN WOULD EVER BRING A CHILD INTO THIS WORLD. The last of which is a particularly uncomfortable sentiment to espouse so passionately at this exact moment (um, is Ilana Glazer an anti-vaxxer? Seems kinda like it), and unfortunately not one which you can really ignore because due to the movie's terror that you might miss the subtle point that it keeps making in every single scene, it also takes the liberty of just going ahead and stopping everything to have a character give a lecture on this topic, complete with a slideshow of BABIES DEFORMED BY THE CALLOUS, COLDY UNFEELING SCIENCE OF THE PENIS (these appear to be real medical photos, an especially questionable choice). The criticisms expressed here are not exactly unwarranted or without merit, but a youtube slideshow lecture sure is an awkward, clunky thing to have right in the middle of your genre movie, and it's about as subtle as Steven Seagal's speech at the end of ON DEADLY GROUND. And it just feels so desperate. Do they really think that if we didn't understand by the millionth repetition that the cavalcade of little slights ends up leaving the lead character feeling oppressed and gaslit, that explaining it aloud is going to do the trick?

As with so much modern horror (particular from A24), this makes FALSE POSITIVE feel like a PSA first, and a movie --let along a genre movie—a distant second. It's the kind of movie so eager to demonstrate its intersectional right-thinking that it goes out of its way to introduce a disorientingly stereotypical “ethnic” character just so it can admonish itself for being racist. I mean, come on. I hate to use the term “virtue signaling” because it's been co-opted by the absolute worst people on the planet, and hey, virtue is a good thing, and it's fine to signal it, especially if it encourages others to be virtuous. But this smug, handwringing genuflection to the alter of twitter talking points is exactly why this kind of thing irks people. In fact, it makes the very real issues the movie is about feel phony and calculated, self-serving strawmen constructed to score easy culture war points, rather than honest reflections of an imperfect real world. The one-note desperation of the messaging makes the film seem insecure about that very message; surely if they had real confidence in these themes, they would just tell a story and let the message emerge naturally from that, rather than stringing along a skeleton of a plot from a series of pre-planned talking points.

SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING: And unfortunately, it’s not like this is all going somewhere which will justify all the pedantic hand-holding. In fact, it’s not really going anywhere at all. The ending is just kind of small and dumb, and while certainly on-point for the movie’s theme (though no more or less than any other scene) I can’t help but notice that it doesn’t seem to square up too well with the movie that leads up to it. Turns out the big secret is: Brosnan’s narcissistic doctor has impregnated Lucy with his own sperm, and was never going to take her preference for a female child seriously. And I guess her husband was in on it, although he remains a completely murky character and I’m not sure exactly how involved he was in the whole thing. But that’s it, that’s the whole evil secret; there’s nothing supernatural going on, there’s barely even a conspiracy, just some sordid medical malpractice with rapey overtones. I guess she really was a big hallucinating baby after all? I don't see why Dr. Hindle’s self-promoting eugenics program would cause her to hallucinate and black out and shit. And what was up with the sinister safe her husband was hiding? Was that real, and if so, what was in it? Just, like, a letter that said, “I confess that I collaborated with my medical school professor to impregnate my wife with his sperm?” Obviously Lucy has been extremely ill-used, but this seems like awfully small potatoes to have, like, a complete mental breakdown over. I’m not even sure Dr. Hindle (and his sinister henchwoman, played by Gretchen Mol!) deserve to be savagely bludgeoned to death. He definitely needs to lose his medical license, get slapped with a bankrupting civil lawsuit, and probably spend some time in jail, but at the same time, just marching into his office and murdering him doesn’t feel like righteous vengeance so much as the movie anxiously assuring us that, darn it, it sure would smash that nasty ol’ patriarchy right up if only it could. It makes thematic sense more than it feels like it naturally arises out of anything in the story or character. In fact, it really feels most like something they reshot at the last minute when they decided they didn't like their original ending, something that sort of vaguely relates to the rest of the movie, but feels so arbitrary and disconnected that it’s hard to believe this was always where the filmmakers intended the story to go.** ( END SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING.

Anyway, it’s not all bad news; the movie looks great (Pogorzelski gets up to a lot of funny business with mirrors and lighting, probably mostly out of boredom) it has a solid score, and Glazer's expressive face --so great for comedy-- at least nails the nuanced emotions she experiences (over, and over, and over) again. And Brosnan, basically playing his character for velvet-tongued camp, is kind of a hoot. But yeah, "ROSEMARY'S BABY but clumsier and more pedantic and with a worse ending" is not really something the world was in desperate need of. Although it is nice to have a version which wasn't directed by a rapist.*** Oh yeah, right. That. Although I didn't like this movie much, let’s not forget that despite its clumsiness, the very fact of Roman Polanski's continued freedom does prove that it has something of a point. I just wish it were expressed with more verve (and more whammy) than this.

 Also, holy cow, I was going to make a joke in there about director John Lee referencing the 2002 They Might Be Giants song John Lee Supertaster. But then I found out the song actually is about this John Lee, who knew They Might Be Giants through his now-defunct band Muckafurgason! Woah, this movie is directed by John Lee Supertaster! Wild shit.

 

* Man, good thing ROSEMARY’S BABY doesn’t open with her looking at the devil-baby’s eyes and then flash back to “nine months ago,” huh? That would really suck.

** END SPOILERS CONTINUE HERE: This sense that the whole ending got re-shot into vague nonsense is bolstered by what happens with the babies; returning home to her disgusting, unwanted male children, she walks them over to the window of her high-rise apartment and lets them float away, maybe vaguely playing off some of the Peter Pan motifs which have been lurking around. But holy shit, wow, she murders her own children! I’m not sure I’m on this lady’s side anymore! But wait, oh, ok, I guess that was just a fantasy because then it flashes back to her just handing them off to her weird husband and giving all three of them the boot. Still pretty harsh, but more to the point, now we just have two scenes in a row communicating the same basic rejection of her children, and I just don’t believe a writer, even a bad writer, would think that was necessary or wise. My guess is they originally ended with the window thing, which is at least kinda bold and crazy, but then chickened out when they realized that no audience, however pro-woman, was going to be happy seeing the protagonist send two babies to splatter on the concrete fifteen floors below, so they punted and tried to claim it was just a metaphor. But the fact that I don’t really know just emphasizes how muddled this all is.  END SPOILERS STOP

 

***As far as I know

Family Blood

Family Blood (2018)

Dir Sonny Mallhi

Written by Vinessa Shaw, Sonny Mallhi

Starring Vinessa Shaw, James Ransone, Colin Ford

           

            It was only recently that it dawned on me that the modern wave of gloomy, glacial, uneventful indie horror films was the natural replacement for the waning fad of found-footage. Before FAMILY BLOOD, I kind of took it for granted that the recent wave of “Post-horror” films (as the movement was patronizingly dubbed by The Guardian), about which I wrote at length in my review of HEREDITARY, were, if maybe a bit misguided, at least in earnest. I might prefer a genre film that has some actual entertaining qualities to a film which is basically a slow-motion family drama with a scary soundtrack, but I assumed, mostly due to their cultural ascendancy in the last few years, that at least some people must feel otherwise. That these films were being made by people who wanted to make them and were expressing their own artistic inclination, misguided as they might be.

            Recent events, though, suggests a rather more disturbing possibility. After all, while the found-footage craze might have started with something of a formalist experiment, it flourished as producers noticed they could be made for almost nothing. Likewise, I suddenly wondered, what if the the “post-horror” wave *began* innocently, with a handful of indie wunderkinds paying tribute to DON’T LOOK NOW, but arrived as a movement for rather more sinister reasons, as producers suddenly caught on that audiences would pay for genre movies with literally no genre content at all, if they could pass themselves off as tasteful. I bet they didn’t even mind re-hiring the cinematographers “found-footage” had put out of a job, because you can shoot a perfectly professional-looking movie on a fucking iPhone now. And besides, it’s not the crew that ends up costing money: it’s the content. Found-footage was cheap because it made things so visibly illegible that you didn’t have to cough up a lot of dough for monster costumes or fake beheadings. The revelation producers had with “Post-horror” is that you don’t even have to hide your lack of content, as long as you dress it up as art.  

            I mean, how else to explain a movie as stunningly empty as FAMILY BLOOD? I refuse, refuse flat out, to believe this is a movie anyone wanted to make. This is not the kind of thing that artists make. Artists might make bad art sometimes, but even the worst of it at least betrays some flicker of human intent. This is not even the kind of thing exploitation producers used to make back in the grindhouse days to snag lowest-common denominator dollars. Those could also be bad, but at least they grasped that the point --however poorly-executed that might be in practice-- was entertainment. Maybe they didn’t have the budget to show you tits and gore and explosions, but they at least understood that’s what you would want to see. Even the most impoverished, indolent, artistically bankrupt shot-in-the-Philippines 1970s T&A trash would never dream of releasing a movie as openly unrewarding as this, and certainly no filmmaker with even a glimmer of artistic ambition would bother with something so flimsy. No, this is a movie that could only have been made for the Netflix era, that brief period in history when art was being produced not for the artist or for the audience, but for an algorithm. This is a movie made because Netflix must have content, dammit, and it really doesn’t matter what that content is, specifically, and it doesn’t matter one iota if anyone actually enjoys it, or for that matter if anyone even watches it. It just has to exist. It has to be there, so that the mathematically relevant demographics can see that they have a disorienting surfeit of content to select from, even if they would never even entertain the idea of actually selecting most of it.

            That does, unfortunately, necessitate that if this thing gets accidentally clicked on, 90 minutes of images will follow. And for some reason, I called their bluff and watched that 90 minutes. In it, director Sonny Mallhi (a producer of middlebrow horror trash and remakes going back to 2006’s THE LAKE HOUSE) and co-writer Nic Savvides propose an amazing, never-before considered high-concept hook: what if --and stay with me here—we did a vampire film, but it was a metaphor for addiction? Truly, a groundbreaking notion which has only ever been explored previously in every other vampire film ever made. But that’s not quite the whole concept, because Mallhi and Savvides came up with a crafty twist on the old canard, and amended their conceit thusly: what if we did a vampire film, but it was a metaphor for addiction, and then we took out the part where the vampires did things?

            I mean, give them this, at least; they really do put the “post” in “post-horror.” This is a movie about a vaguely-defined divorcee (Vinessa [sic] Shaw, THE HILLS HAVE EYES REMAKE, holy cow, EYES WIDE SHUT) with two kids (Colin Ford, UNDER THE DOME and Eloise Lushina, GRAYBEARD) who has been an addict. She was an addict, and she is currently in an AA-like recovery group, and that is literally as far as the movie cares to go in terms of characterization. Alas, on her way home from a meeting, somebody offers her drugs, and so obviously she takes them –I mean, what are you gonna do, refuse pills offered to you in public by some degenerate, slurring stranger? That would be rude-- and zones out in a public park, which leaves her open to vampire attack courtesy of this guy Christopher (James Ransone, The Wire, SINISTER) who converts her to vampirism, basically because he wants a girlfriend. So the rest of the movie is about her starting to crave blood and act like an addict, because you see, this is a metaphor for addiction, except not really since it actually establishes her as an addict in the text itself. So it’s not so much a metaphor as just a movie about an addict, except blood instead of crack or whatever so that we can sell it as a genre movie because let’s face it, nobody on Earth is going to be interested in this basic-ass addiction drama otherwise.

            You might think there’s more, but that’s it! She’s just an addict, and she does addict things, and her kids get angsty about her being an addict, and her new boyfriend shows her the lifestyle on account of her being an addict. That is the entire plot. Eventually the fact that Addict #1 is addict-y becomes a little too monotonous even for this movie, and the focus shifts to her son, who has to come to terms with the fact that mom is an addict. But it’s not like he’s any more complex or interesting than his mom, it’s still just a bedrock-basic, Lifetime Original Movie addiction drama except with vampires, except without vampires because almost everything interesting happens off-screen. Seriously; there’s eventually even a superpowered vampire fight, and it happens off screen. THIS AIN’T A FUCKIN’ VAL LEWTON PICTURE YOU DIPSHITS. THIS IS A VISUAL MEDIUM. SHOW ME SOMETHING.

            There are perhaps two brief but adequate spooky/stalking sequences in there, and it does get a little bit violent at the very, very end, but there’s just no movie here. This is insipid drama, and barely even horror at all. The cast mostly isn’t actively bad, but these characters are so wafer-thin that even calling them “characters” feels like a misnomer, and nobody here manages to even come close to overcoming that handicap. Even Ransone’s usual livewire nervous energy is quashed almost to nothing (it looks like he was cast entirely on the strength of vaguely resembling Jack Gyllenhall and then given the exclusive direction to “brood more”). In fact, despite being technically much more competent than many movies I watched this October, it managed to avoid the dreaded “unwatchable garbage” tag almost exclusively for the 2-4 seconds of twitchy oddness that Ransone manages to get through. There are worse movies in the world, but there can’t be many that manage to do less with what they have. WINTERBEAST may be terrible, but by God at least it tries to entertain. FAMILY BLOOD chooses not to. I would say that’s because it’s pretentious hipster faux horror that thinks entertaining is beneath it, but I don’t even believe that. I think they just figured they could get by without trying. Pretension is one thing; hell, even contempt is one thing. This just feels like not giving a shit.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2019 CHECKLIST!

For Richer or Horror

TAGLINE	Even a tagline would require more effort than this movie has in it.
TITLE ACCURACY	Family, check, blood, check.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Vampire, “post-horror”
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Both Shaw and Ransone have dabbled in horror, but I wouldn’t call them icons.
NUDITY?	No
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	No
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Animals end up getting attacked rather than the other way around
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Vampire!
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	No
EVIL CULT?	No
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Human into vampire
VOYEURISM?	Nothing much, although I guess you could say than Christopher has been watching the family.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Horror movies which have metaphors are better than “horror” movies which are only metaphors.

The Woman

The Woman (2011)

Dir. Lucky McKee

Written by Lucky McKee, Jack Ketchum

Starring Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis, Zach Rand

THE WOMAN has a deceptively simple premise. Archetypical father figure and successful lawyer Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers, in an astounding performance that could not be more different from his tightrope walk playing a mentally ill character in JUG FACE) is hunting in the woods one day when he discovers a ragged, feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh, BURKE AND HARE, THE OFFSPRING, FILTH) living on her own as a hunter-gatherer. He incapacitates her with a sucker punch, and brings her back home to his obedient family, where he informs them that she will be kept chained up in their garage until she is civilized. Of course, that civilization process is going to be a rough road, complete with physical abuse, stress positions, dehumanizing treatment, and, inevitably, sexual assault.

Does that sound familiar? Had this film come out in 2006 instead of 2011, everyone would have been talking about how the film was an obvious metaphor for the Bush administration’s disastrous occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, right down to its uncomfortable evocation of Abu Ghraib. You’ve got this affable, middle-aged white man, totally normal and nonthreatening on the surface, who evokes lofty notions of tradition and civilization as a pretext to dominate, brutalize, and satisfy his own whims. That brutality nearly always comes with some folksy chuckle, some appeal to authority, some subtly demeaning put-down of anyone who might question his authority or his motives, which just makes it all the more perverse and infuriating. He doesn’t even feel the need to hide or downplay what he’s up to, because he has nothing but violent contempt for anyone who might take issue with him. Bridgers, with his bright blue eyes and boyish features, is a perfect embodiment of the superficially aw-shucks professional good-old-boy, and perfectly portrays the sociopathic viciousness that simmers below his friendly patriarchal demeanor.

Prepare to hate this guy SO MUCH.

I use the word “patriarchy” intentionally, because it’s obviously on director McKee’s mind here. Mr. Cleek presides over a perfectly formed Cleaver household, harmonious and idyllic until you realize that it’s harmonious only to the extent that he’s been able to utterly and decisively beat down his mousy wife (Angela Bettis, MAY) and barely-present daughters, and convince them all that it’s both totally natural and for their own good. His wife knows that his plan is insane, that he’s become a monster and is gleefully turning their son (Zach Rand… GHOUL? Not the Boris Karloff one, the 2012 TV movie. WOMAN is his first credited film) into a something maybe even worse. But she’s too intimidated by him to offer even the most mild resistance. There’s a great moment when she and the captured Woman lock eyes, and both realize the only sane thing to do is to kill this maniac right there… but she chickens out, can’t quite bring herself to try it. The Woman just looks disgusted. Not to belabor the point, but even if the metaphor is not specifically political, the cultural critique is startlingly pointed. Most of the time, bullies don’t even have to do anything to keep their power; we do the work for them by being afraid and just going along with it even when we know, when it could not be more obvious, that the whole enterprise is horrifying and inhuman. We chicken out, we turn away. Sorry lady, I feel for ya, but I’m just trying to live my life here, I can’t throw the whole thing into chaos just to do the right thing.

The whole movie is about that control, it’s about how we allow insecure, desperate frauds to frighten us and bully us and turn the world into a nightmare if they’re sociopathic enough to push harder than we’re willing to resist. We’re not willing or able to go as far as they are, because we’re just trying to live our lives, and so we give them an inch, and another inch, and before you know it you’ve got these dehumanizing systems in place, so firmly entrenched that we don’t even really see them there anymore, blackening our souls and infiltrating our minds. It’s how the guys who vote to spend billions killing foreigners step over the homeless on their way to work and don’t think twice about it. It’s how kids resent their parents for abusing them, and then grow up to do the same to their own kids. But most importantly here, it’s how the more men dehumanize and dismiss women, the more women internalize their valuelessness, constrain themselves, even embrace and defend the systems that keep them there. Fitting, then, that only a true outsider --the feral Woman-- can see the sham that all this is, and without speaking a word Pollyanna McIntosh conveys a dark, endless contempt for every single person perpetuating this vicious cycle.

So many potential chain song references here, and yet that seems like it might be a little too far even for me.

It’s a rough movie, an infuriating one. You got to endure a lot of sadism here, and are offered very little satisfaction in return. Even more than the other two Lucky McKee movies I’ve seen (excellent MAY and THE WOODS) this has a decidedly unconventional horror structure; no jump scares, almost no gore for most of the runtime. No dark, shadowy atmosphere, no supernatural, unnamable horrors to pique your imagination. Almost no real narrative conflict, even, since the titular Woman is chained up and beyond any ability to help herself, and obviously no one else is going to try. It’s just a long document of cruelty and helpless suffering, finely tuned to provoke and enrage. I mean, if any movie could fairly be labeled “torture porn,” it would have to be this one. And yet, there’s nothing about this that seems exploitative or bloodthirsty; it feels more like Wes Craven’s early work, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT or HILLS HAVE EYES, the work of an angry, frustrated humanist lashing out at a world which brazenly supports real-life horrors while squeamishly sanitizing them on screen. But THE WOMAN has more focus and insight than either of those, and if you can manage to endure the journey, the destination offers something a little more satisfying and genre-friendly.

One thing that is often overlooked by scholars talking about horror cinema’s perceived misogyny is that it’s actually a genre which features, on average, more female protagonists than almost any other. That’s not necessarily an example of progress, of course, since horror protagonists are often going to be more effective if they seem vulnerable and victimized, and of course that’s a role Western society has always placed women in. But even so, simply having more female characters in general creates a (dispiritingly) unique opportunity to explore women, their worlds, their ideas, their issues. I mean, look at all the giallos I’ve reviewed that actually ace the Bechdel test, most with a female main character and some with nearly complete female casts. Try finding a Kubrick film that can do that, or, hell, even an action film or a sex flick. Alas, the downfall of the horror genre is that often it tends to regard its characters as more or less generic cannon fodder, so lots of times having more female characters does not really translate into having more interesting female characters, or exploring women and their experience in a way that more male-dominated films do not. McKee is a happy exception to that rule; MAY and THE WOODS are deeply female-focused, finding time and interest to explore their characters and the world they perceived and inhabit. In fact, of his seven full-length films, only one (2008’s RED, which I haven’t seen but which sounds good and has Brian Cox) has any significant male protagonists. But THE WOMAN may be his most explicitly feminist film; despite all the suffering endured by the women, McKee makes time to humanize them, to deal with their conflict and, crucially, their flaws. This is obviously a critique of patriarchy, but McKee doesn’t simply let his female character be passive victims; sometimes they’re active victims, sometimes they’re passive participants in victimization, but they’re all active agents, shaping their own worldview and destinies. Even when they seem to be wholly victimized, McKee reminds us that accepting victimhood is also an active choice, and it can have its own consequences.

Oh good, the Romney family finally got their own movie.

Of course, McKee isn’t the only voice here; he co-wrote the script with novelist Jack Ketchum, a kind of weird crime/horror writer known for so-called “splatterpunk” novels like Off Season and The Girl Next Door. Apparently it’s actually a sequel to his 1991 novel OFFSPRING (itself made into a movie, though not by McKee) which it turns out was itself a sequel to his 1980 cannibalism sensation Off Season. I didn’t know any of that going into this one, though I guess maybe it explains that otherwise confusing flashback early in the film where the Woman remembers something about children and wolves (actually come to think of it, I guess this is also why they don't feel the need to explain anything at all about who this feral woman is and how she got this way). I haven’t read any of Ketchum’s novels, but McKee must like him since this is the second of two novels he’s adapted, and he produced his buddy Chris Siverton’s weird-but-effective 2006 Ketchum adaptation THE LOST. Based on the film adaptations I’ve seen, I’m not sure Ketchum’s clear-eyed fixation on grueling, grinding human suffering is my cup of tea, but I’ll remain open-minded because his wikipedia entry claims he was mentored by Robert Bloch (PSYCHO, THE SKULL, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD) who himself was mentored by none other than H.P. Lovecraft (every horror adaptation since 1950).* Anyway, who knows what Ketchum’s deal is, but perhaps he appeals to McKee because his brand of horror offers something a little different from your standard dark room/scary noise formula.

McKee does right by the material here; it’s tricky stuff that could easily have been a rote exercise in grim, unfocused shock tactics in the hands of a lesser artist. He’s got some serious chops as a filmmaker, and is especially good at casting and getting exactly the right performance from his actors. There are a couple odd choices in there, though; for one, the movie is structured well, but can be edited strangely. Like in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME, the towering masterpiece of arty ridiculousness by McKee’s friend and recent co-director (on the even more all-over-the-place ALL CHEERLEADER DIE) Chris Siverton, scenes can linger awkwardly, they can fade all the way out and back when a simple jump cut would have sufficed, and that can make the rhythm feel languid and dreamy in a way which I’m not sure benefits this particular material. Not a disaster, but a little odd. The bigger problem here is the music; the soundtrack is packed with these dorky 90’s-sounding alt-rockers with sometimes irritatingly on-the-nose lyrics by composer Sean Spillane. They would have been fine in a deleted scene from EMPIRE RECORDS, but they’re outrageously out of place here, and they’re impossible to ignore since the movie practically turns into a music video on a few occasions. I don’t recall McKee’s other films being like this, so I presume this was done intentionally. Is it supposed to be ironic to have these long, corny rock songs in the middle of this insanely grim story? I don’t know, if so it might have worked better with well-worn pop songs (See: Anger, Kenneth); these knock-off wannabe Marcy’s Playground also-rans won’t cut it. So I don’t know what the deal is. There is a remote possibility --and I almost hate to bring this up, it seems like a cheap shot, but as a journalist I am obliged to explore all possible angles-- that McKee is just personally into this stuff. I miss the 90's too, man, but these songs couldn't be more wrong for this subject matter.**

But those are minor complaints, unequivocally dwarfed by the impressive stature of what McKee has accomplished here. This is a difficult, abrasive, grueling, lacerating film experience, something confrontational and pointed in a way which very, very few American films attempt. It’s simple, and (aside from a few meandering subplots) elegantly focused on a single concept which manages to start off bad and somehow still build its own furious tension, despite extremely minimal actual change in the narrative. It's full of performances which are stylized but still psychologically rich, it's full of allegory but never explicitly polemical, it’s repellent but disquietingly seductive. I’ve said it before this Chainsawnukah, but this time I really mean it: I’m very glad most movies aren’t like this. But on its own this is a powerful, absolutely riveting work of horror cinema. You may hate it, but it’s the work of a real artistic voice trying something bold and different. In the prophetic words of Harry Belafonte, “that’s right, THE WOMAN is (uh) smarter.”

* I never heard that (or, actually, any anecdote in which a human had a positive encounter with Lovecraft) but it’s cool enough that I’m going to accept it.

** Man, looking online it seems like some people really love these tunes, I don't know if Spillane has a large extended family or if I'm just the asshole here. So your mileage may vary, but either way they seem super out of place here.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2014 CHECKLIST!

The Hunt For Dread October

• LITERARY ADAPTATION: Interestingly, though a sequel to two other novels, this one was originally co-written by McKee and Ketchum. In fact, Ketchum and McKee co-wrote a novelization of it as well, and it came out in 2012, after the movie. How often does that happen?
• SEQUEL: It is a sequel to the 2009 film THE OFFSPRING (not to be confused with FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM, also sometimes titled THE OFFSPRING). And also not to be confused with the 1990's punk band of the same name, who in 2009 would produce far more horror than some cannibal movie ever could. THE OFFSPRING isn't directed by McKee, but it does star Pollyanna McIntosh as the feral woman --the only character to appear in both films-- so it's definitely a sequel and not a reboot or something.
• REMAKE: None
• FOREIGNER: No
• FOUND-FOOTAGE CLUSTERFUCK: None
• SLUMMING A-LISTER: None
• BELOVED HORROR ICON: Angela Bettis was in MAY, TOOLBOX MURDERS, and she directed ROMAN (which actually stars McKee, ha!). She counts. Also I guess she was originally gonna be in SINSTER, but her scenes were cut. Bad move, bros.
• BOOBIES: I honestly can't remember, it's been too long. You wouldn't want to see 'em in this context anyway.
• SEXUAL ASSAULT: Yup.
• DISMEMBERMENT PLAN: Oh yeah. Finger removed. Torso removed.
• HAUNTED HOUSE: No
• MONSTER: No
• THE UNDEAD: No
• POSSESSION: No
• SLASHER/GIALLO: No
• PSYCHO KILLERS (Non-slasher variety): Yes
• EVIL CULT: No
• (UNCANNY) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: No
• TRANSMOGRIFICATION: None
• OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid. Well-regarded by people in the know.
• MORAL OF THE STORY: Men are just the absolute fucking worst. But we couldn't do it without you, ladies.
• TITLE ACCURACY: There is a woman, so pretty much 100%.
• ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She did!