Stephen King: "If you are easily disturbed, you should not watch this movie. If, on the other hand, you are prepared for a long look into hell, suburban style, The Girl Next Door will not disappoint. This is the dark-side-of-the-moon version of Stand By Me."
He ain't lying. Twisted, disturbing and about the scariest thing I've seen in a long time because it's so believable. Movies with monsters are easy to dismiss because we always know they are fake. But this...this is the real kind of scary, this is the kind of thing we catch glimpses of on the news -- that story of abuse, that story of kids tormenting another kid -- that the papers give enough to tantalize or horrify, but then pull back from. This movie doesn't pull back. It's about as intense as any movie out there.
The story: Inspired by true events in 1958. David is a young teen in a small town. He meets Meg while looking for crawdaddy's. Meg and her younger sister have moved into the house next door with her aunt and her aunt's three sons after her parents were killed in a car accident. But her aunt doesn't like Meg and begins firs tto verbally harrass her, then physically abuse her, then tie her up in the basement and begin to torture her, all in front of other kids in the neighborhood who do not report anything until it is far, far too late.
Okay, so obviously this isn't the jump-at-monsters sort of horror movie ala FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH or some vampire flick. Those are kind of fun-scary, like going on roller coaster rides where you want to be a little scared but you know you are safe. This is the kind of real scary because it is so real. The way the aunt is depicted -- first she's almost the cool parent who let's the kids play or have a beer or whatever, but then we see her turn on Meg and the escalation with the boys. The point of view of the movie is from the young neighbor, David, who likes Meg but becomes trapped within their sadistic "games." The problem with these sorts of movies is why tell this story? I mean, on one hand we all know that there are these sadists who do these things. Wanting to shove it in people's faces to wake them up is fine, but that doesn't feel like what this movie is doing. I mean, it's a case from the 50's. Why make the movie now? And without that -- without that understanding of why we are watching this, why this is a story that needs to be told -- the story begins to falter. LORD OF THE FLIES is a story of boys who begin to commit horrific acts of violence, but that has the point that children aren't these nice, innocent creatures, but in fact can be quite monsterous (a shocking notion at the time). This movie...I don't know. In the end, David does try to save Meg, but it doesn't really feel like it's about a boy finally standing up to other kids who are doing something horrible. It has this group of kids and the aunt who have this strange group dynamic that leads them down this path of torture, but it doesn't really feel like he's trying to examine the nature of violence and how people are led down that path (or how others can lead them there). He makes a point of having other kids from the neighborhood watching the torture, but again it doesn't seem to be about the way kids will accept or even participate in these horrific acts.
I don't know. The movie is intense and shocking in a way few movies ever even try to be. But without that feeling of what was being said, it boils down to simply watching a young girl be tortured by her aunt and nephews. It's a shame, because if the filmmakers had dug a little deeper and found something to say, then the movie could have been a difficult but powerful movie, along the lines of BREAKING THE WAVES. Without it...
*** CAN'T QUITE RECOMMEND (and would only recommend for those willing to deal with a very shocking and brutal movie anyway) ***
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