Director Lucky McKee’s unflinchingly brutal shocker about a feral woman, “tamed” by a crazed family man, arrives with a rather notorious festival reputation. Prepare to be shocked.

If you’ve read reports regarding the Sundance premiere of The Woman earlier this year (or seen footage on YouTube), then you might feel intimidated: one of the most notorious festival screenings in recent years, the premiere of American independent director Lucky McKee’s new horror film found some audience members fleeing the theater, collapsing and seeking medical care, attacking the director during the Q&A and demanding that the film be burned (!). But while The Woman is indeed often very shocking and graphic, there is a method to the madness concocted by McKee and his collaborator, acclaimed horror novelist Jack Ketchum – and while the film explores misogyny, it does so with a critical feminist intelligence (not to mention bravura filmmaking style). The story finds the titular feral woman wounded in the forest and captured by Chris Cleek, a lawyer and family man who takes it upon himself to “civilize” this wild backwoods girl by imprisoning her in his basement and subjecting her to sexual abuse, initially at his hands, and then ultimately also at the hands of his son. Chris’ wife Belle (McKee’s May collaborator Angela Bettis) and their two daughters watch in shock as the family’s males torment their new addition… but the woman is plotting her revenge. The Woman is certainly ferocious fare, and sensitive viewers are cautioned about its content – but McKee’s grisly dissection of patriarchal oppression cuts to the bone. -- Travis Crawford