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The Girl Next Door (2007) DVD Review
The Girl Next Door (2007) DVD Credits:
The Girl Next Door (2007) Directed by:
Gregory Wilson
The Girl Next Door (2007) Written by:
David Wagner, Brent Goldberg
The Girl Next Door (2007) Cast:
William Atherton, Blanche Baker, Grant Show, Catherine Stewart, Kevin Chamberlin
The Girl Next Door (2007) Released by:
Not available at this time
Region:
1
The Girl Next Door (2007) DVD Release Date:
4th December 2007
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The Girl Next Door (2007) Synopsis:

The Girl Next Door (2007) DVD Review:

Based on Jack Ketchum’s novel, The Girl Next Door is an intensely disturbing film. Set in 1950s suburban America, the film loosely follows the real-life story of Sylvia Likens and the months of torture she endured at the hands of middle-aged woman Gertrude Baniszewski, her children, and several neighborhood kids. The film begins with the voiceover of actor William Atherton, who leads us into the tortuous events he witnessed as a boy. The orphaned, teenaged Meg Loughlin (Blythe Auffarth as the character based on Likens) and her paraplegic younger sister are forced to live in a house with Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker) and her adolescent sons. What starts as mild dislike soon turns into sheer cruelty, as Aunt Ruth ties up Meg in the basement of her house, where she hangs, usually naked, crucifixion style from two ropes. Ruth’s children and the neighborhood kids take turns torturing Meg via cutting, burning, mutilating, and raping her, as Atherton’s boyhood self, David (Daniel Manche) watches. David is the only character who has any compassion for the girl, however he does very little to help besides some mild pleadings to Aunt Ruth and the other children to stop. It is not until Ruth begins the genital mutilation of Meg that David attempts to take any kind of substantial preventative action, but at this point its too late.

The Girl Next Door is a very difficult film to watch. While not a horror film per se, it is truly horrific in nature. The highly disturbing sexual torturing perpetrated by young boys with the encouragement of the demented Aunt Ruth (“Call me Auntie Ruth!”), is far from a pleasant cinematic experience. Aunt Ruth’s hatred of women motivates her cruelty, as she repeatedly tells her sons that “Girls are dumb, girls are easy, straight on down the line.” She construes the innocent relationship between the young David and Meg as a sinful one, and makes Meg out to be a slut. And as Ruth warns, “Anyone who’s a slut deserves a thrashing.” So much of the violence in this film is sexually motivated and sexual in nature, which is perhaps what makes it uniquely disturbing. The cutaways to Ruth’s angular, snakelike face while she watches her young sons torture and rape young Meg are some of the most disturbing moments I’ve witnessed in film. As a devout paracinema fan and cinephile who actively seeks out the most bizarre and unsettling pieces of celluloid, The Girl Next Door ranks right up there with some of the most unbearable films I’ve seen since the likes of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s aberrantly sick Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975), a film that depicts the torture, rape, and mutilation of a group of children at the hands of government officials under Musollini’s regime. While not nearly as graphic with respect to what we see onscreen, The Girl Next Door is almost as equally harrowing.
The recent popularity of the so-called “torture porn” genre might be enough to spark interest in The Girl Next Door. But make no mistake, this is not the stylized type of torture-porn à la Hostel, Wolf Creek, or the Saw series, as The Girl Next Door takes a more realistic approach in its depiction, another factor that contributes to the film’s chilling “mommie dearest” quality. It is unclear why the torture-porn genre has seen so much success lately, but I guess many of us filmgoers simply like to witness extremely disturbing events.
If it seems like I’ve dedicated the bulk of this review towards the disturbing nature of The Girl Next Door, that is because there is simply not much else worthy of discussion. The acting is mediocre, as the performances of the children and other supporting characters are fairly stolid. The exception being that of Emmy winner Blanche Baker’s performance as Aunt Ruth, whose malicious speak and unflinchingly chilled stares contain a kind of sick composure Joan Crawford could be proud of. Apart from performances, the film is competently shot and edited, but contains nothing to write home about.
With all that said, The Girl Next Door is probably not the best film to pop in the DVD player on movie night with the family, or even for the average horror fan, who might be enticed by the horror/torture-porn qualities, as the film will most likely be marketed towards this audience. If you do decide to watch this film, go into it prepared for what you’re going to see, as the MPAA’s warning pretty much sums it up: “For sadistic torture and sexual abuse, nudity, language and strong sexual dialogue - all involving children.” So, if you’re like me, and for some perverse reason you seek films that push the disturbing envelope as far as it will go, then I can recommend The Girl Next Door, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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The Girl Next Door (2007) DVD review written by: David Friedman

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