10 Movies That People Wrongfully Accuse Of Being Misogynistic

Recently in New York City, director Franck Khalfoun attended the NY premiere of his latest horror film, Maniac, a stylized remake (opening theatrically and on VOD early next year) of the notoriously grimy 1980 slasher flick of the same name. In Khalfoun's version, Elijah Wood plays a nebbish, seemingly harmless dude with mommy issues who scalps beautiful women and places their severed wigs on mannequins. Cleverly and effectively shot from Wood's character's first-person POV, Maniac puts viewers face-to-face (literally) with the female victims as they're being chased down and methodically murdered.

During the post-screening Q&A, a woman in the audience asked Khalfoun if he considers Maniac to be misogynistic. The filmmaker's response: "It's a movie about a misogynist," so, therefore, it's somewhat guilty by association but not altogether culpable. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense—not to mention, it's also a fair defense for countless other films that have been unfairly criticized for promoting negativity toward women when, in fact, that's not the case.

A hardcore work of realistic horror, Maniac should provoke even more controversy once it officially debuts in 2013. And when Khalfoun's film does irk sensitive critics and moviegoers alike, easily irritable lovers of political correctness will find a new reason to condemn genre cinema for what they perceive to be irresponsible treatment of women. Many times, they're right to pounce upon unquestionably negligible films, but, once in awhile, the moral watchdogs go after undeserving marks, like these 10 Movies That Have Been Wrongfully Accused of Being Misogynistic. The question is, do you agree?

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Review by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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Director: David Fincher
Stars: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Zach Grenier, Jared Leto

One of the best book-to-film adaptations of all time, David Fincher's excellent cinematic take on Chuck Palahniuk's satirical 1996 novel Fight Club retains all of the author's intelligent, uniquely humorous views on mankind while putting those attributes in the hands of acting powerhouses Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. The former plays Tyler Durden, a soap salesman who, with his underground ring of man-against-man fights, becomes a role model to the nameless narrator (Edward Norton), an insomniac who's disinterested in his job and life as a whole.

When he's not with Durden, the narrator spends time with the troubled Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), whom Durden doesn't like. At one point, after the two guys' relationship gets strained, Marla is referred to as the one who "ruined everything." Cue the misogyny claims.

Claims, it should be said, that Fincher would most likely deflect with profanity. The filmmaker knew what he was handling once he embraced Palahniuk's source material: A look at how men so dulled by life's unavoidable requirements (jobs, bills, etc.) can, more often than not, only feel alive through experiencing pain. As in, the punches, scars, and bruises that come from taking part in Durden's Fight Club.

Director: Jonathan Levine
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, Matt Frewer, Philip Baker Hall, Serge Houde

In one regard, Jonathan Levine's tender, funny, and emotionally powerful 2011 dramedy 50/50 is about two best friends—played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen—forced to navigate through one's flirtations with death via cancer.

At least that's the plot point that the film's detractors tend to emphasize as a way to call Levine and screenwriter (and real-life cancer survivor) Will Reiser out for, in their eyes, turning 50/50's female characters into one-note wastes. There's Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), sickly Adam's (Gordon-Levitt) girlfriend who cheats on him as a way to cope with their situation, and whom Kyle (Rogen) sees as the enemy. And then there's Katherine (Anna Kendrick), Adam's sweet, subservient, and lovably insecure therapist who represents hope. As the haters claim, Rachael and Katherine cover the duality of women in a wishful man's eye: They're either cold heartbreakers or warm and (hopelessly) likable.

The rest of the movies included on this list all present legitimate arguments from misogyny-detesters, but 50/50? It just seems ridiculous. Levine's film is so well-intentioned, and filled with such delicately honest performances, that attacking it with such flimsy shots is frustratingly trivial. Even though she's unfaithful to a dying man, Rachael's actions aren't unrealistic—some people just aren't able to handle traumatic situations. And why shouldn't Katherine be so gentle? In a story about overcoming terminal adversity, it makes perfect sense to have a character who's a glass-half-full kind of person.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, John Gavin, John McIntire

Slasher films, more so than any other kind of horror, are prime targets for misogyny labels. Save for a select few examples, the stalk-and-butcher lane is one mostly populated by filmmakers whose sole concerns are casting beautiful women, having some of those women disrobe (whether in the shower or during a sex scene), and then staging elaborate, blood-soaked murders that leave the female characters slaughtered. Which, yes, is quite misogynistic. There's no denying that.

But that's only describing the worst, lowest-tier slasher flicks. The great ones—like the grandaddy of them all, Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho—work on much deeper levels of psychological complexity. The film's central figure, young hotel proprietor/mamas's boy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), is—Spoiler Alert—a schizophrenic, homicidal maniac who dresses up in women's clothing to kill people. It all stems back to when Norman murdered his mother for spending more time with her new lover than with him. Since offing her, Norman feels tremendous guilt and, in order to keep "mother" alive in his head, he's developed an extra personality through which his inner voice speaks in mother's tone.

That's much different from slasher movies about previously bullied social outcasts enacting their adulthood vengeance by targeting bimbos with huge tits and non-existent personalities. In Psycho, the blame for Norman's problem is placed on those mommy issues, providing another, and perhaps the biggest, reason for critics to call the film misogynistic: It's all the woman's fault. But in Norman's eyes, it truly is her fault.

You're not buying that? Well, remember this: He's a psycho. Killing her triggered his worst mental imbalances, and her voice is always in his thoughts, controlling his actions—stabbing Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to death in that now-iconic shower, for instance.

Director: Lars von Trier
Stars: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe

Danish filmmaker, and perpetual lightning rod for controversy, Lars von Trier certainly wants you to think that Antichrist—his darkest, angriest film to date, made in a deep state of personal depression—is an anti-women affair. The story of two unnamed lovers grieving over their infant son's tragic death by crying and mutilating one another in an isolated, wooded cabin, Antichrist was made with the help of an actual, credited "Misogyny Expert," Danish journalist Heidi Laura.

But, having read any of von Trier's occasional interviews, his fans should know that the writer-director has a very sly, bleak sense of humor, and including a "Misogyny Expert" in his movie's liner notes seems like a preemptive, hit-them-before-they-hit-me strike. Think Eminem's self-deprecating battle rap at the end of 8 Mile.

As for the film itself, Antichrist presents brutal imagery that's difficult for any person to watch, but especially females—in one scene, for example, co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg uses scissors to snip off a piece of her own vagina. Such visuals are so shockingly graphic that they paralyze viewers into a purely reactionary state—a woman is getting brutalized by a man while also brutalizing herself, so Antichrist must be misogynistic.

Take a harder look at the film, though, and Antichrist is too complicated to so quickly categorize, particularly when it comes to Gainsbourg's role. She's stricken by a condescending, pretentious husband (Willem Dafoe) who's subtly repressing her sexuality. So what does von Trier do? He has "She," as Gainsbourg's character is so vaguely named, turn her internalized resentments into externalized vengeance against "He."

To properly analyze all that's going on in Antichrist would, frankly, require it's own list—"10 Reasons Why Lars von Trier's Antichrist Isn't a Treatise to Harm Women," perhaps. In the simplest terms, Gainsbourg's character's psychological complexities, and even her personal interests (for one, she's working on a thesis about misogyny), hint at deeper meanings and loaded agendas on von Trier's part. Hastily saying that von Trier's film proves that he hates women is to both belittle his art and refuse to dig beneath the surface.

Director: Neil LaBute
Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy, Stacy Edwards

Like many films improperly labeled as "misogynistic," Neil LaBute's polarizing In the Company of Men deals with outright misogynists but isn't worthy of such description itself. Also similar to other movies on this list, it requires efforts on behalf of its viewers to look beyond what's addressed in the IMDb page's plot synopsis, which, in this case, states that In the Company of Men is about two corporate jerks who strategically try to destroy a deaf female co-worker's spirits. Although, the efforts to dissect LaBute's script seem minimal compared to, say Antichrist.

Aside from being a very well-written character, Chad (Aaron Eckhart) is an easy one to decipher: He hates both men and women with equal vigor, and his excitement in mentally assaulting Christine (Stacy Edwards) is always heightened by how he manipulates Howard (Matt Malloy) in the process. To him, Christine is just a pawn in a much bigger chess game. Chad loathes mankind's vulnerable tendencies, so when Howard talks about the ways he chases after his girlfriend, Chad sees his colleague-in-misogyny as a puny weakling. What kind of man would call his girl three times in a row just to make her call him back? One who deserves to be crushed.

In the end, Howard gets it much worse than Christine, and, moreover, Chad's awful characteristics are made abundantly clear. In the Company of Men leaves Christine as the obvious answer to the question of, "Who would you rather be?"

Director: Judd Apatow
Stars: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr, Charlyne Yi

That's right—amidst their laughter while watching Judd Apatow's hilarious Knocked Up, many people also take issue with the writer-director's depiction of females. To these annoyed viewers and critics, Knocked Up's main female character, go-getting entertainment reporter Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl), is the kind of woman who only exists in the minds of male daydreamers: a beautiful, curvy blonde who's unopposed to sleeping with a chubby, entirely unappealing slacker (Seth Rogen). Meaning, she's a fantasy woman, not a fully realized character.

Yes, it is difficult to picture a looker like Heigl exiting a nightclub with a schlub like Rogen with intentions to do anything other than visit a 24-hour eatery for drunk munchies. But is it misogynistic? Definitely not. Apatow is simply better at writing about men than he is women. Which is why Knocked Up's best moments come whenever Rogen's Ben is hanging out with his equally unmotivated friends—all, of course, being male.

He's also pro-women, and much of Knocked Up is dedicated to Allison's struggles with reluctantly starting a family while living with her sister (Leslie Mann) and brother-in-law (Paul Rudd) even though she's a successful, grown woman. Put into that context, Allison's intoxicated decision to sleep with the first dude who shows interest acts as a wake-up call of sorts. Any narrative inconsistencies that derive from navigating Allison toward her happy ending come from Apatow's inability to handle fictional women as well as he does men, not from a place of subconscious hatred toward the other gender.

Director: Mary Harron
Stars: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Jared Leto, Samantha Mathis, Justin Theroux, Reese Witherspoon, Cara Seymour, Josh Lucas

American Psycho's battles against feminists and defenders of good taste trace back to the 1991 publication of author Bret Easton Ellis' original novel. The book, like the movie adaptation, is a gruesome and darkly comedic look at a young Wall Street yuppy's obsessions with manifesting his prejudices, women-are-sex-objects attitude, and sense of entitlement in murderous, Ed-Gein-inspired ways. In the 2000 film, scenes depict Patrick Bateman (played brilliantly by Christian Bale) physically and mentally abusing prostitutes, dismembering them with chainsaws, and hanging mangled female corpses on hangers in a closet. Which, on a purely surface level, sure looks and feels misogynistic.

What so many of American Psycho's pissed-off critics seem to overlook, however, is the fact that it's a satire—an incredibly smart one, at that. And what both Ellis' novel and (wouldn't you know it, female) director Mary Harron's film skewer is worst kind of consumerist, superficially inclined person who fails to realize that surrounding one's self with expensive, fancy things only exacerbates one's ever-growing unhappiness.

American Psycho is only misogynistic because, well, it has to be in order to present the most extreme manifestation of a guy like Patrick Bateman's most dangerous impulses. But Ellis and Harron did so knowingly and without malice.

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Zoe Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms

The films made by Quentin Tarantino often favor female characters, because, A) he's a red-blooded American dude who loves the womanly form (particularly a lady's feet), and, B) he loves seeing women kick ass. Sometimes, along the way, those women catch multiple bruises and lumps, as in the Kill Bill movies, but, in the end, they emerge victorious. Death Proof, however, is a tougher film to evaluate in this way. Tarantino's half of the 2007 exploitation throwback double bill Grindhouse, Death Proof finds Kurt Russell playing a psychotic stunt driver who gets off on killing women with his souped-up car.

Naysayers have dubbed the film "misogynistic" mainly for its first half, which follows three hedonistic, fun-loving, carefree chicks (Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, and Sydney Tamia Poitier) who, unfortunately, befriend Russell's Stuntman Mike and meet grisly deaths hours later. And those who call Death Proof "feminist" focus more on the latter portion, where a bunch of professional, film-industry-working women (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Zoe Bell, Tracie Thoms, and Rosario Dawson) fare much better against Mike, taking him down, crushing his face in, and slapping each other high-five as the credits start to roll.

So who's right here? The second group, though it's understandable why people would come down so hard on Death Proof. Tarantino's not a misogynist—he's just not very good at cleanly translating his pro-women ideals, at least in this case. One interesting way to view Death Proof is by looking at the two sets of characters: the first would rather drink, give lap dances in bars, and get high than work, which is what the other girls do in lieu of partying. If anything, Death Proof is Tarantino's way of saying that bad girls get punished and good girls succeed. In that way, he's actually more comparable to a Catholic school nun—albeit one who grew up on provocative, cheaply made '70s genre movies—than a hateful pervert.

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Bill Pullman, Simon Baker, Ned Beatty, Tom Bower, Elias Koteas

In 1952, the great noir novelist Jim Thompson wrote a bleak, nightmarish first-person character study titled The Killer Inside Me, about Texas sheriff Lou Ford, a publicly respected figure who, unbeknownst to the people around him, harbors an intense bloodlust and repeatedly allows it to get the best of him. A masterful storyteller, Thompson used his writerly gifts to examine what makes a psychopath tick—the conclusions met by the final page aren't exactly heartwarming, but they're definitely fascinating.

Immediately after signing on to direct the film version of The Killer Inside Me, acclaimed English director Michael Winterbottom made himself susceptible to folks prone to flinging the "misogyny" label around. Its tough, uncompromising material, and Winterbottom's decision to keep the book's rawest moments—such as Ford (Casey Affleck) punching a kind-hearted prostitute's (Jessica Alba) face into a bloody pulp—was a brave one.

It was also the byproduct of Winterbottom's immense respect for The Killer Inside Me novel. And sometimes, as the filmmaking Englishman surely realized, art can be horrific. Lou Ford is a bad man with perverted views toward women, established at an early age (his childhood babysitter forced him to hit her so she could get off). But that doesn't mean Winterbottom is a misogynist for depicting Ford's actions on screen. He's just a guy who's intrigued by complex characters.

Director: Meir Zarchi
Stars: Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleemann

It's the ultimate revenge story: Girl gets viciously raped (multiple times) and left for dead, girl comes to and dreams up a plan to make the male bastards pay, and girl sees that plan all the way through, with gory results. Widely regarded as one of the sickest exploitations movies ever made, Meir Zarchi's controversial I Spit on Your Grave shows the aforementioned sexual violations in steady, unblinking focus: The viewer watches in discomforting horror as Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) is penetrated, pushed into the dirt, and donkey-punched. By giving audiences the whole, in-your-face moment, Zarchi invited years' worth of accusations of misogyny.

Anyone who's still around to finish I Spit on Your Grave once the rapes have ended, though, knows why the film is anything but anti-woman. In the nastiest way imagine, Zarchi's grisly picture is wholeheartedly feminist. Just as he makes you sit through Jennifer's torment, Zarchi never looks away each time she creatively murders her assailants, and by the movie's end, she's become the epitome of women unwilling to simply bend over and let oppression keep them down.