I'm a massive horror fan. I just watched Backcountry, a movie with great reviews for a horror film (critics usually hate the genre). I actually loved the film - it's terrific, and fucking terrifying.

The plot is straightforward: a couple go on a camping trip in bear country. Let me just say, I'll never look at a bear (teddy or otherwise) in the same way again.

However...

The movie practically broke the scale with its relentless misandry. The woman, Jenn, is a lawyer, city girl, with no experience of country living. Her boyfriend Alex is supposed to be born and raised on farms and in the country. Never mind where their life experiences are supposed to lie: he shows zero ability to do anything practical - every decision he makes in the film is absolutely idiotic.

So...

He tells her not to bring a flare or bear spray. He refuses to bring a map with them, assuming he knows the entire outback like the back of his hand. He secretly takes her mobile phone out of her bag so that she won't be distracted by work. He's also portrayed as a douchebag loser, and gets emasculated by some random hill-walker they meet. In the end they get lost - and I'll just say, what happens to him when the bear finds them may be the most horrifying death I've ever seen in a movie. It's really quite something.

Her, on the other hand (again: a city lawyer) grabs nature by the balls. She sprays the shit out of that bear. She manages the forest like an aboriginal, climbing trees at night, making tourniquets, climbing down a waterfall to escape the bear. She breaks her leg, but immediately sets it with sticks and a sock. She finds a canoe and gets out alive in the end. The man who emasculated her boyfriend finds her and helps her, and we're done.

And here's the best part:

This movie is "based on a true story"... only that in the real story of Jacqueline Perry and Mark Jordan, the woman got mauled, and the man survived while trying to save his wife, because he managed to get the bear in a headlock and punch it, as well as stab it five or six times with a knife! And after fighting off the bear, he carried her and kayaked her to a doctor - only for her to succumb to her injuries and die. His injuries from the attack required 300 stitches.

Is that fucking brilliant, or what?

So to make the story a better sell, they reversed the "survivor" genders, turned the man into an incompetent douchebag, made of the woman a hard-ass, and bingo! Great reviews and festival nominations. In other words, you want to sell a horror movie? Sprinkle in a nice pinch of misandry - or even better, throw a fucking handful in!

Now this seems large coming from a horror fan - the genre is littered with horrifying deaths that happen to stupid men and women (as well as endless portrayals of men as crazed, bloodthirsty devils). The reason it's more striking in this film is that there is nothing tongue and cheek about it - this is a serious, realistic movie, and you invest in the characters in the build up. They are real people, and the monster in the movie is also very real.

In conclusion...

All of this might make Backcountry a grand contender for the Misandry in the Movies Award 2015.