The Girl Next Door (2007, Review)

Director: Gregory Wilson

Cast: Blythe Auffarth, Daniel Manche, Blanche Baker

Starz/Anchor Bay / Color / NTSC R1 / Unrated / Widescreen 1.78:1 (Anamorphic) / ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 & ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Stereo / 91 mins / Purchase: DiabolikDVD.com

The 1950′s. Small towns. Ice cream trucks. Neighborhood carnivals. Childhood friends. Sadistic torture. Young Davey lives in a small town with his quaint family and his neighborhood buddies. They hang out, play together and drink beer with Ruth, three of the boys’ mother. Ruth is the “cool mom” on the block that talks to the boys like adults and dishes out cynical and often perverse life lessons. All is well for Davey and his friends. But things are about to change.

Ruth’s sister and brother-in-law have been killed in a car accident and their kids, Meg and Madeline, have been sent to live with Ruth and her boys. Meg is a beautiful teenage girl and Madeline is her crippled adolescent sister. Davey and his friends are curious about the girls, especially Meg. Unfortunately for Meg, Ruth also has decided to give her attention.

Ruth’s abuse begins harmlessly enough; a tongue lashing here, unfair treatment there. But as she begins to warp and fire her sons curiosity and natural inclination for harmless cruelty, the words and mistreatment become full fledged torture. Through the innocence of the boys’, she acts out on the teenage girl in the most vicious ways imaginable. Davey begins to see through the manipulation and merely watches the events unfold until he can’t take anymore and tries to save the sisters from obvious death.

I read this cruel and unflinching book by Jack Ketchum about 6 months ago and was floored by its raw portrayal of child abuse. It was one of those books that crawls into your head and doesn’t leave for weeks. In talking to my wife and sharing the story with her, she tells me of a real-life story that she read about that was exactly the same thing. It turns out that the book, as well as the movie, is based on the story of Sylvia Likens who was abused and murdered by Gertrude Baniszewski and her brood.

It was pretty clear that the movie adaptation could never show the horrors the book described. It would be nearly impossible without someone being arrested. For everything the movie couldn’t do, it made the most of what it could. It went to the line and tiptoed it. If you are a fan of the humorously named “torture porn” (Hostel, Saw, etc) that has taken over horror these days, this movie will affect you much more for its depiction of realistic domestic cruelty without the need to bathe in an ugly girl’s blood.

Greg Baty

Greg is a lifelong genre film fan who digs boobs, blood and beer. He also enjoys old school punk rock, comic books and spending time with his beautiful wife Ellen and his cats Sydney and Alabama. Greg is the webmaster, Editor in Chief and Head Writer for Cinesploitation.

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