Entertainment

‘Woman’: Wild, disturbing

I knew I was in for a wild viewing when the producers of “The Woman” sent me a DVD of the movie wrapped in a barf bag. I didn’t need the bag, but it was comforting to know it was there.

Directed by Lucky McKee from a novel by horror maestro Jack Ketchum (McKee and Ketchum penned the screenplay), “The Woman’’ is disturbing, lurid and perverse, but that isn’t necessarily bad: Horror buffs, especially fans of Ketchum, will be overcome with joy and excitement.

Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers) is a small-town lawyer who seems nice enough. He’s not — he treats his wife and three children as if they were his personal slaves.

Matters get worse when Chris comes upon a wild woman living in the woods near his house. Nice guy that he is, he throws a net over her and drags her home. He chains her up in the basement and calls the family to come and see what Daddy brought home. “We’re going to help her,’’ he declares. “We’ll civilize her, free her from her baser instincts.’’

The captive, who communicates via wild grunts and groans, rewards Chris by biting off and eating one of his fingers. But you’d probably do the same thing if you were chained naked in some crazy guy’s cellar. About three-quarters of the way through, Chris’ wife screams at him: “Have you lost your mind?” You wonder what took her so long to come to that conclusion.

The movie grows weirder by the second, and hits its high (or low) point when teenage daughter Peggy’s foxy geometry teacher comes over to talk about the girl’s “distressing behavior.” The film ends with a splatterfest that will have viewers laughing and cringing at the same time.

“The Woman’’ is smartly filmed and directed, with fine acting by all, especially Pollyanna McIntosh as the wild woman, Lauren Ashley Carter as pixie-haired Peggy and Bridgers. It would make a killer midnight double-feature with “The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence).’’