Lucky McKee's The Woman stirred up some controversy when it premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. However, that controversy had more to do with what audiences expected or wanted to see than anything unique to the film itself. Like many horror films, The Woman shows the audience images of horrors that they probably want to avoid in everyday life; horrors that they hope and pray do not even exist. The sad fact is that these horrors do exist; this is precisely the power of horror movies, to take audiences out of their comfort zone and reveal truths about horrors in real life. In the case of The Woman, that fictionalized horror is the all-too-real violence against women prevalent in society.
A now-historic video of a Sundance guest being removed from a screening room is at the center of the supposed controversy surrounding The Woman. In the video, an irate man criticizes the movie as being demeaning to women in the worst way. He goes as far as saying that The Woman is not art, that it has no value, and that the film should be burned. While this viral video may have given the movie a controversial tilt, there is actually nothing truly controversial about it other than its being a very effective horror movie.
Ultimately, the man's argument is that the movie's horrific scenes were filmed purely for shock value, not for any artistic reasons. While he may be right that The Woman is shocking, he is completely wrong about it having no value. Questioning the specific value of any movie is always fair, but to declare that it has no value simply because it makes people uncomfortable only demonstrates a lack of understanding of the horror genre and perhaps of art itself.
It's not clear what exactly upset the man so much, because The Woman contains several violent and disturbing scenes. However, this is obviously nothing new for a horror movie. The movie's ending is a blood-soaked montage of revenge distributed by the titular cannibal. Perhaps this is what the man was upset about. However, the build-up to this finale of gore contains many scenes of quiet domestic violence against women, scenes which are in many ways much worse than the savagery displayed by the feral Woman character. However, neither of these elements is new for the horror genre or for any other genre for that matter.
Essentially, The Woman makes all the same points about society's misogynistic tendencies as, for example, A Handmaid's Tale. Both contain scenes of rape, torture, murder, and justified vengeance, but only one is a "controversy." In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, McKee stated that only men would mistakenly see the movie as controversial. This is backed up by the fact that the sequel, Darlin', was directed by Pollyanna McIntosh, the actress who portrays The Woman's titular character. Any argument that The Woman is exploitative is at best uninformed, considering that McKee's other works - which include May, The Woods, and even horror comedy All Cheerleaders Die - address similar themes of women's empowerment. Perhaps the man in the video was upset that the movie reflected something about himself he didn't want to face.
It's understandable that audiences would be disturbed by a movie like The Woman—that's the whole point. Horror is often about showing humanity's darkest, most disturbing sides in a new context, from a new perspective. This is exactly what The Woman has done with humanity's penchant for misogyny, and it's certainly not the first movie to do so. In art, literature, and movies there is a widespread criticism of our misogynistic culture, and rightly so. The Woman is no different in this respect. Violence against women is a real issue, one that The Woman highlights using many of the typical tools and tropes of the horror genre. Ironically, any criticism of The Woman that focuses on its justifiably gory ending proves its thesis—the external horrors and injustices that women face are unjustly given more attention than those that may be lurking inside their very own homes.