Movieline

'Art' or 'Bullsh*t'? Watch the Trailer For Sundance Lightning Rod The Woman

Last January, when director Lucky McKee debuted his latest horror pic, The Woman (about a family man who traps and imprisons a feral lady he finds in the woods) at the Sundance Film Festival, he got quite the audience reaction; one moviegoer fainted during the film's brutal denouement, and another stood up at the post-film Q&A to berate McKee over the film's value. Today, we've got the first trailer for the controversial pic; watch it and decide -- does The Woman appear to be a work of "art" or "bullshit"?

Granted, it's merely a trailer and one can't reasonably determine the answer to that question without watching the full film. But here's what you get at first glance: The gender dynamic between a stringent, semi-tyrannical father/husband and his traditional family unit, the instinctive defensive nature of a woman (and mother with a child of her own, perhaps?), how imposed social restraints can beget unspeakable violence. And, on top of all that, McKee seems to be having fun telling this tale of a misogynist getting his just desserts -- just listen to that score!

That said, McKee was clearly conscientious about his film and its message when he spoke with Movieline following his controversial Sundance premiere. "There's nothing more scary than a fucking human being," he said back in January. "We do some pretty awful things, and the thing that's scary about it is we know what we're doing, we're conscious of it." [Read more of Movieline's interview with Lucky McKee here.]

The Woman, adapted from author Jack Ketchum's story of the same name, stars Angela Bettis. A release date is TBA.