Lucky McKee Looks Back on ‘The Woman’

Directed by Lucky McKee, The Woman was first released in 2011. It starred Pollyanna McIntosh as she reprised her role from Andrew can den Houten’s Offspring. At the end of Offspring, McIntosh’s ‘Woman’ found herself the sole survivor of her cannibalistic tribe. In The Woman her character found herself captured by a man determined to change her feral instincts through any method possible. Initially the film received some backlash, but over the years it has slowly garnered a loyal following of people whom get the real message that McKee was trying to convey. Arrow Video have decided to reward these loyal fans with a brand new blu-ray.

The disc in question is out now and features a brand-new fully restored 4K version of the movie. The restoration was overseen by McKee himself, and ahead of the release we caught up with him to find out a little more.

The Woman is getting a snazzy new Blu-ray release through Arrow Video, how did that come together?

The producer of The Woman, Andrew van den Houten, and I have known this fellow called Mike Hewitt for quite some time. He was working at the company that originally picked up The Woman when it was first released in 2011, and now Mike works at Arrow. We knew the rights were expiring with the distributors we initially had for The Woman. We talked about what our favourite labels were and Arrow was at the top of that list. We connected with Mike and started talking about it, and they were just the perfect place to release this thing. They’re wonderful. I love working with Arrow. They’re so cool. This is the coolest release I’ve had. It’s loaded with extras, we remastered the movie, it looks really gorgeous. It’s just really special. My wife did the cover art, so it’s all really cool.

So what are people going to get on this release that they haven’t had before?

They’re going to get the movie remastered in 4K. The movie looks better than it did when it was initially released. That extra resolution and that extra depth in the darkness of the image is just incredible. They get several new commentary tracks. There’s also this cool extra on the blu-ray that’s…when we made the film my dad was there for the entire shoot. He was walking around with a little handy-cam and was just filming everybody making the movie over the course of those four weeks. We had about fifteen-twenty hours of footage and my editor and I went through that footage and just created this collage of a little bit of everyday on set, making the film. It’s about an eighty minute piece, but it’s not like a bunch of interviews where people are talking about how great everybody is, you’re just a fly on the wall, watching all these people make the film. It’s a really interesting little time capsule that shows people what goes into making a low-budget horror film. How fun it can be, even if you’re making something super dark.

I’ve watched the new master and it sounds incredible. The bit after the first gun shot with all the ringing, it was so high-pitched and lasted so long. I mean I had two cats in the room – if it was high-pitched for me, I have no idea how their eardrums didn’t explode…

That’s what it was like for our sound designer to edit that and mix that. He kept saying ‘this is gonna really mess with people, I should probably turn it down a little bit,’ and I kept telling him to turn it up. But he had to listen to it over and over again. He would just walk out of his dub room once in a while and be, ‘I need a break man, I can’t listen to that sound over and over again.’ (Laughs) That sound designer, Andrew Smetek, who I’ve worked with – that was the first film I’d worked with him on and he’s done every one of my films since. He’s just one of my favourite collaborators. Him and my editor Zach Passero are on everything that I do. They understand what I’m going for and they always bring so much of themselves to the work. We’re really proud of that mix.

It was certainly impressive. For what was a low-budget film, the quality of the technicality is really to be commended.

Thank you, that means a lot.

And I think my cats can still hear.

(Laughs) You know that gunshot actually broke the speakers at the Stiges Film Festival in their big main theatre. It blew out the whole right channel of the theatre. Our sound designer was pretty happy. They gave me and Jack Ketchum an award for our script at that festival; when I got back I gave it to my sound designer and just said, ‘you broke the theatre with your sound mix, this is amazing!’ He was pretty proud of that.

When the film initially released, it kind of got mired in some controversy, people viewed it in one way. Since the film has been released we’ve had the #MeToo movement, and to me the film is very much a study of toxic masculinity, especially within the home. Do you think as people revisit it they’ll see it in a different light to maybe what they did the first time around?

I hope so. I actually…gosh, with as amazing a job as Arrow’s been doing, what they’ve done working with us and putting this thing together, I almost feel the movie’s in a better position for success now than when it came out. Because of the things that you mention. The world that we’re living in now feels a little bit more like the world of the movie. I think there’s a lot more people that can kind of relate to what the characters are going through. It’s a trip. It’s depressing, that’s true. But ultimately us discussing all of these things and confronting all of these things, and not just sweeping them under the rug, ultimately and hopefully will lead to better things.

It’s a rough movie. It’s about abuse. It’s about so many different kinds of abuse too. Just being under the thumb of a wicked man. That fairy-tale quality that it has too is one of my favourite things. One of the most special things about it to me is that Polly’s character of The Woman is almost like this fairy tale creature that comes out and kind of frees this family from the horrible situation they’re living in. Which is definitely a fantasy to a lot of people who have to live with this stuff. I’ve had a lot of people contact me after seeing the film saying that they’ve been through some rough things and just seeing a film admit that these things are going on was oddly comforting. I think all of us have been abused in one way or the other growing up. Maybe not in as extreme a fashion as in the film, but it’s all relative to the individual. We’re all scarred up.

This was the second time that Pollyanna played The Woman. What does she bring to this role do you think, that makes it so special?

Just 100% commitment. I don’t know if you’ve got the chance to speak with Polly before, or have been around her, but she’s almost like a superhero or something like that. She’s just a magnificent person. She’s just a wonderfully magnetic individual and is highly intelligent. She just thinks on a lot deeper level than I do about a lot of things. It led to a lot of really interesting discussions and she was a great moral compass for her character, and just the broader story in general. She brings everything to it. The movie doesn’t work without her. That’s why I recommended that she do the sequel. I wasn’t interested and Ketchum wasn’t interested in making another film in that world. We felt like we’d said everything that we wanted to say. The producer was really excited about making another one because he was really happy with how The Woman went, and I just told him, ‘you should ask Polly. No one knows that character as well as Ketchum and I do, but Polly.’

Your last film Kindred Spirits is very different from The Woman, some filmmakers find their niche and are happy to stay there. Is it important to you to tell different stories in different ways?

Yeah, I mean I love horror, but, I love many genres though. Kindred Spirits was an opportunity to just go more into the thriller area. They were making a lot of those movies back in the late eighties, early nineties, movies like Black Widow or Single White Female. I always loved those mid-range thrillers that the studios used to make. They don’t really make them anymore, so it was really fun. Ultimately though, any movie I make, the most important thing is the characters. The genre is just a vehicle for the character.

I thought that you got an incredible performance out of Caitlin Stasey. I’m in the UK so grew up watching her in Neighbours and was just blown away by what she was doing.

She’s so special. I don’t understand whey she’s not a bigger deal than she is. She’s obviously done well for herself, but she’s very, very special. She’s magnetic on camera.

You seem to frequently collaborate with the same people, how important is it to you that you build that relationship of trust? Does it make it easier to work with them on that second or third film to have that shorthand?

Usually yeah. There’s a comfort there. That’s why I use the same sound designer on every movie that I can, or the same editor, and actors are the same way. I’ve worked with actors where our first thing we’ve done together wasn’t a great experience, but once you get past that you realise, ‘oh wow, we did something really special,’ and there’s this trust that builds between you; moving forwards from there there’s a comfort level that leads to even greater things. It’s all about comfort.

Kindred Spirits is a slight shift from the horror genre. Are there any other genres that you’re keen to dip into?

There’s a few. The thing I’m working on right now is like a dream project, it’s not horror. It’s not necessarily a suspense film, but there’s elements of a lot of different genres in it. I think a lot of people would like for me to keep making May over and over again, but I said what I wanted to say with that movie. I’m not an angsty twenty-year old anymore. I’m kind of an adult now. I’m married, I have a kid. I just have a different perspective on life. I think that naturally happens as you go along, you get interested in different things.

Given you’re now a dad, have you considered branching out into family films?

I wouldn’t say no to it… I mean I don’t have anything on the books right now, but I do have a fairy-tale that I’ve been wanting to make for years and years. But it’d almost be cost prohibited to make it. I might do it in just written form, or maybe a comic book or something. Just to get it out, because I’ve been working on that for over twenty years. But it’s a dark fairy-tale (laughs), so I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be opposed to making a children’s film. I think it’d be really fun.

The Woman available on Blu-ray now.