I confess, when I first heard about The Woman, which the folks out at Vivendi / Bloody Disgusting sent out our way for review, I was concerned. See, The Woman is the sequel to Offspring, both of which are Jack Ketchum titles. And that had me seriously on edge. But was my concern merited? Well, only one way to find out–read on.

The Woman takes us to just a few minutes after Offspring ended, where the only survivor of the clan of cannibals roaming Dead River that invaded and got summarily killed by the local sheriff and his family is fleeing for her life in the general direction of away. And when she finally gets far enough out of range, she finds herself out of the frying pan and into the fire by landing in the clutches of an overbearing court official. Said official decides that he and his family are going to get Pygmalion on this chick’s ass and “civilize” her. This is a project that he’ll regret…assuming he lives long enough to regret it.

The Woman has been regarded as extremely controversial, dating back to one of its first releases when someone stormed out of a film and launched into a grand mal hissy fit demanding that the movie be destroyed. And you know when a movie starts hyping its own controversy, as opposed to its own merits on storytelling or effects work, you have a pretty good bet you’re in for an unpleasant time.

And indeed, this is Ketchum in a nutshell. Where Offspring gave me the disturbing feeling that someone in this day and age was still making money on torture porn, The Woman takes away that disturbing feeling and replaces it with a horrible certainty. In fact, the farther in we get with The Woman the more it’s clear that the objective here is to rain down punishment on the feral chick and actually, somehow, manage to build audience support for a woman who was, just one film ago, stealing babies and eating human flesh. One would think that it was impossible to turn the cannibalistic child-abductor into a sympathetic figure, but it helps when you land in the clutches of Mr. Domineering Sociopath and his son, I Like To Hurt People Jr.

Undoubtedly Lifetime is already on the phone to Lucky McKee hoping to land this sucker for a long-term contract to play every weekend and all day Mother’s Day, because every male of any significance in this thing is a homicidal lunatic, and every woman is either a downtrodden mouse, a cannibal, or a relative nothing.

Yet at the same time, it’s hard to deny that this is defintiely unique. And anything unique is downright hard to come by these days. I have to hand it to McKee for making a film that virtually no one has ever made before. This is unsettling and disturbing stuff to say the least. It’s not going to be for everybody, and in fact, it’s probably not going to be for most people. But for those who can stand it, you’ll probably enjoy this decidedly unusual twist on any of a variety of titles.  And on top of it, substantial bonus points for the most unexpected twist ending.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Woman a straight five out of ten, for being terrific stuff for a handful of people, but being largely unwatchable for a variety of others.