Fair or not, this adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s disturbing novel will surely be lumped in with all the torture porn films of recent years, such as Hostel and Captivity. This probably explains why this film was released on DVD, since the popularity of that sub-genre appears to have been snuffed out.
But while this movie certainly involves torture, it doesn’t revel in it. The camera doesn’t linger on the victim. But that certainly doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Ketchum’s novel, set in the 50s, is based on the real life torture and murder of a girl named Sylvia Likens in the 60s.
In Ketchum’s story, the crime is seen through the eyes of David, a young boy living next door to a woman and her three boys. The woman soon takes in her two nieces, Meg and Susan, whose parents were killed in a car crash that has left Susan, the youngest girl, disabled.
Ruth, a woman in her 30s clearly unsuitable for the role of caregiver, is considered one of the guys by the neighborhood kids, letting them drink and smoke in her house.
Ruth, disillusioned with her lot in life and clearly suffering from mental issues, takes an instant dislike to the girls, especially Meg. Her verbal abuse soon escalates into something far worse. As her grip on reality fades, her cruelty increases. But what’s worse is she lets her children, and some other neighborhood kids, in on the “fun.”
While Ketchum’s novel lets the story develop slowly, unfolding through David’s eyes, the film version loses all the nuance of his conflicted psyche. While the acting is decent, Ruth’s character comes across as unbelievable, despite being based on a real woman. The creeping sense of building madness in the book becomes one clinical abuse scene after another on screen.
Meg’s character is much older than in the book, which one assumes the director decided would make the movie easier to get made. But it hurts during one key scene, when David and Meg hatch a child-like plan to escape. In the book you can buy two 12-year-olds making that plan. Here you expect the older girl to tell the boy to go home and call the damn police already.
The Girl Next Door is not an easy movie to watch because of its disturbing subject matter. It’s a tale worth telling (Sylvia’s story is also the subject of the upcoming film An American Crime), but Ketchum did it better on paper. Skip this and pick up the book.
--Jeff Cercone