Vile. If you haven't seen it, don't.

Rating: 1/10 (22 January 2012)

I only watched this movie because there was such an incredible amount of hype about it. I cannot fathom why. It is repulsive.
I only continued to watch it to see if there would be some redeeming quality or some point to it. But by the time I got to the end, I felt like I needed to take a shower or rinse my mouth out with mouthwash.
I don't think I have ever despised a character in a movie as much as Holly Hunter's Ada. It was, quite frankly, irritating that she was "mute". I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle her. A great ending to the movie would have been if she had drowned. I cannot believe she won an Oscar for that, nor Anna Paquin.
I don't know whether Holly Hunter was told to become anorexic for this role but it was not a pleasant sight, seeing her naked. There is nothing erotic about making love to a skeleton.
What I found so offensive about the film was the overt sexual vulgarity. There was a scene in which the husband (Sam Neill) was watching them having sex. A dog came up to him and started licking his hand. He didn't move his hand away and the dog continued to lick his hand. Beastiality come to mind? Worst of all was when her daughter was watching them have sex. That just made me squirm. Afterwards, she imitated what she saw by graphically humping a tree trunk, the other children then imitating her. At this point in the film I felt sick. Child porn come to mind?
When the finger got cut off and the daughter was forced to "messenger" it, I'd had enough.
At no point during writing, filming and production of this abomination, did anyone think they could have turned this into a beautiful period piece instead of the smut that it was?