‘Winter’s Bone’ will yank your chainsaw

I’ve sat through any number of horror movies that try to shock. Especially with chainsaws. Whether it’s Leatherface, doing his dance in the setting sun, or a vengeful father hunting down the last of the gang that murdered his daughter, the chainsaw announces its presence with a whine that is more diabolical than my former mother-in-law.

The harridan who was my first mother-in-law, I mean.

Still, never have I seen a chainsaw wielded with more purpose, with less exploitation and yet with better effect that in the scene that takes place just about 20 minutes from the end of the Ozark family drama “Winter’s Bone.”

The film tells the story of Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), just 17 and the oldest of three children who are in trouble. Their mother is so emotionally troubled that she’s nearly catatonic, and their father - wanted by the police for meth production and sales - is missing. Since good old dad had signed his home and property away to pay for his bail, his family could become homeless if he doesn’t make his court date.

Which is why Ree, when she has a free moment from doing the laundry, splitting the wood, fixing dinner for her younger siblings and, in general, running the house, goes in search of dad. Only this is the Ozark Mountains, that back-country place of log-cabin poverty and
Deliverance” lifestyle, where people don’t talk to the cops. Any talk, you see, leads to witnesses - and witnesses are dangerous to people who like to keep secrets.

But Ree is tough. So tough that she stands up to everyone, including her relatives - actually, this being the back woods, pretty much everyone is her relative, is you catch my drift - in her effort to save the old homestead. Her toughness, though, leads to her getting abused by a number of her inbred inlaws - with the threat always present of something worse.

“Winter’s Bone,” which is adapted from the novel by Daniel Woodrell, doesn’t actually go anywhere unexpected. Ree doesn’t win the lottery or find a fairly godmother or develop super powers or any of the kind of fantasy that television specializes in. It stays close to its own sense of what’s real, which means pathos (ceramic sprites set in the yard of the area’s hardest man), brutality (skinning of meat in the neighbor’s front yard) and desperation (Ree considers enlisting in the Army just so she can use the ostensible $40,000 signing bonus to save her family).

What the film, directed and co-written by Debra Granik, does do differently is offer up a scene that might be the most terrifying single scene of 2010. It may not compare with anything directed by, say, Eli Roth, but then that’s just a matter of perspective. In a horror movie, you expect to see shocking imagery. In a family drama, even an Ozark family drama, you don’t expect to have to cover your eyes.

But when that chainsaw starts whining, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And it’s exactly what my wife did. And I bet Ree wanted to as well.

That’s “Winter’s Bone.” I’m not gonna forget that imagery anytime soon.

Below : The trailer for “Winter’s Bone.”