Metacritic reviews

The Woman is not, obviously, a family movie, but it is, like much of the best drama, about a family - here, how an outsider upends its unhinged equilibrium. True to its genre, there is gore and sudden shrieks.

The mix of blunt sexual politics and dime-store-paperback luridness has the bracing quality of tub-brewed rotgut. It eats away at the stomach lining - that is, if it can be stomached at all.

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.

There are plenty of guts, but The Woman doesn't have enough to make its feminist rhetoric stick.

The movie - which caused walkouts and an uproar at Sundance - rewards your endurance with an utterly insane 30-minute climax of violence, audacious gore and all-around bad behavior (how this picture got an R rating is baffling).

So horrifying it caused a number of hardcore journos to storm out of its Sundance screening, btu if you've got thick, thick skin, you might find something here.

The Woman isn't simply a gore-fest. It's just mostly a gore-fest, with a little more going on, as well.

Even with a nauseous climax, The Woman never gets under the skin, and its artsy-languid pacing and incessant lite-metal commentary tunes finally seem like part of an effort to disguise what it really is: torture porn for people who'd never admit to liking torture porn.

Dropping on top of the heap is Lucky McKee's barely competent domestic thriller, bound to make you groan more than think.