'Girl Next Door' a full-throttle horror tale with a message
• I have no idea who would actually want to watch a teenage girl be raped, beaten and tortured to death in a basement. That's the subject of Gregory Wilson's"Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door," a conscience-blanching horror movie based on a real 1965 case. Sixteen-year-old Sylvia Marie Likens died from abuse and malnutrition at the hands of a woman who encouraged neighbor children to put lighted cigarettes on Sylvia's skin and insert objects into her body.
In "The Girl Next Door," New York-born actress Blythe Auffarth bravely tackles the role of Meg, an orphaned teen who, along with her crippled little sister Susan (Madeline Taylor), moves in with her seemingly normal Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker).
Aunt Ruth gradually reveals herself to be far worse than a bad mother who constantly serves beer to her own children. She sets up an environment of abuse against the two girls, particularly Meg, who deflects torment away from Susan by taking it on herself.
There's a bit of "The River's Edge" in this movie, based on Jack Ketchum's novel, as well as a setup right out of "Stand By Me" where an adult writer (here, William Atherton) introduces and closes the story. It's moved back to 1958 when he was a kid named David. He lives next door to Ruth, and becomes a powerless witness to the appalling treatment meted out to Meg. She is burned with heated needles and raped by Ruth's son as neighbor girls watch with morbid curiosity.
Then there's the acetylene torch scene, which, frankly, I could not bear to watch.
It's important to point out that even though "The Girl Next Door" sounds like a piece of torture porn like "Hostel 2" and "Touristas," it is not. Wilson astutely uses restraint and suggestion in dealing with this brutal subject matter and makes it far more shocking than the clinical violence in most other R- and PG-13-rated movies.
Wilson does not side with the tormenters or delight in the infliction of pain as most mad-slasher movies do. He takes a sympathetic view toward Meg, who's eventually failed by David after being failed by an incompetent cop who never checks on Meg but takes Ruth's word that she's OK.
So, "The Girl Next Door" serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when good people do nothing in an environment where hate and evil are allowed to germinate.
This is a full-throttle horror movie that genuinely horrifies but doesn't turn torment into something titillating or exciting. Rather, this movie fills you first with rage, then with sadness, that inhuman cruelty isn't just limited to the Dr. Mengeles of the world, but ordinary people who might very well live next door.
"Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door" opens today at the Wilmette Theatre. Rated R for graphic violence and language. 91 minutes. ...
• Jerry Seinfeld's animated comedy "Bee Movie" has earned more than $80 million so far and ranked No. 1 at the box office last weekend. It also contains the year's highest number of times (nine) that characters flash Roger Ebert's trademarked "thumbs-up" sign to convince audiences they're watching a critically approved motion picture.
Coincidence?
• In 1979, a stupid, dubbed horror movie called "When the Screaming Stops" played at a midnight showing at the Woodfield Theaters in Schaumburg. It carried an X rating for violence because it showed a creature ripping the hearts out of its victims in really dark scenes. Robert Zemeckis' new animated adventure "Beowulf" shows the hero digging his hand into a beast's breast and ripping his bloody heart out. In brightly lighted, graphic detail.
"Beowulf" is rated PG-13.
This isn't the first time the MPAA's Classification and Ratings Administration has failed to use common sense when rating movies to help parents. In Steven Spielberg's 1984 adventure "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," a cult priest jams his hand into the chest of a screaming man and rips out his bleeding, beating heart.
"Temple" was rated PG.
How heartless can the MPAA get?