Chris Cleek is a rural husband with a masochistic edge simmering under his traditional facade. One day while out hunting he happens upon a feral woman bathing in the woods and he traps her and takes her back to his farmhouse, chaining her up in a cellar. He attempts to "civilize" her in between terrorizing his family. It seems clear he abuses his wife and berates her about her appearance as she hides her lithe frame under huge baggy clothes. His son delights in beating up fellow classmates and makes them squirm.
His first attempt to train the feral woman leads to her biting off his ring finger and spitting it back at him. He bathes her in boiling hot water and then washes her with a power washer. Unable to take this his daughter Peggy turns off the machine and protects the woman. Later that night, Chris returns and rapes the woman while his son watches through a crack in the cellar door. He then leaves placing a candle next to the woman. This is similar to an action he took when his daughter Peggy was tucked into bed earlier in the movie. The implication obviously being that he was raping his daughter as well.
His son, later applies pliers to the woman's nipples and ends up hurting her which is seen by his sister who reports it to her mom. The mom goes to the dad who laughs it off which leads to the mom finally standing up to her husband. This is met though with Chris beating her unconscious. At the same time Peggy's teacher shows up and tries to garner some information from the dad about his daughter's behavior. He feels the teacher has uncovered the incest and knocks her out with his fists as well. The teacher is thrown into a dog kennel with two German Shepherd's and an eyeless woman that devours Peggy's teacher. This leads to Peggy releasing the feral woman and 10 minutes of revenge violence ensues.
The film received notoriety when it debuted and woman in the theater supposedly passed out. Another man was escorted from the theater for protesting the film which appeared later on YouTube and became a rallying point for the creators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3lUAZLB4JY
The simple problem is that- this film isn't that good. McKee has a pretty good catalog but here, he is trying to create something that has a larger meeting but it never connects. Most of his message stays on the outer edges of the film and not that I want a film to beat me over the head with its message it would be nice to advance it a little in the context of the film. The film is clearly taking misogynist perpetrators to task, and more fairly- passive aggressive misogynistic individuals- but it is so bleak and so vague in its point that you really need to draw connections. The candle thing is subtle and thus it works, but that is the only thing really that does. The boy has no arc and they never drive in that the boy is repeating the mistakes of his father. I think the stronger film here would've been seeing how the father reacts to his boy's actions as a reflection of his own attitude towards women. As it is we have a film that has something to say but tries to keep it firmly veiled from the viewer. The hype- not entirely the fault of the filmmaker- sort of detracts from that approach though.McKee has made great films- this isn't necessarily one of them.
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