Sick And Depraved?

So, today I have a movie based off a true story that couldn't be more heartbreaking or disturbing....
It's called The Girl Next Door, and no -- we're not referring to the comedy about the porn star who moves to the suburbs.

(That was a HAPPY story.)

Indeed, I'm talking today about a 2007 film that tells the true tale of a 15 year old girl who was brutally tortured and killed by a sadistic Indianapolis mother and several neighborhood children. It happened in 1965, and the girl's name was Sylvia Likens.

There was another film -- An American Crime -- made about this incident, starring Catherine Keener and actually more accurate; but, to me, it's not as worth talking about, for a few rather complicated reasons. See, from my point of view, the liberties taken by The Girl Next Door are what make it so intriguing, and to be honest, I found An American Crime to be a little boring.

The Girl Next Door goes straight for the throat, almost even crossing the line at certain points. I've spent some hours since watching it doing research on the real Sylvia Likens story and, although this film IS overall fairly true, the ways in which it deviates from the actual incident strike me in the same way that the veiled references to pedophilia in Powder did, once I learned about its director's criminal record (click the link to find out for yourself what I'm talking about). You know -- what I'm saying is that it's kinda creepy....

(What "creepy" might look like.)

I mean, this movie GOES there, ratcheting up the sex torture, and taking the psychotic character of Gertrude Baniszewski (the ringleader of the entire Likens episode) to new heights. In real life, this woman deserved to fry, but in The Girl Next Door, she's even MORE insane. I think that says something about the picture's writers-director, and it raises questions about whether this is actually a good film, or deserves to be dismissed as exploitative trash.

Let's take a look:

The Girl Next Door (2007)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0830558/


Netflix description:
Inspired by true events, this thriller set in 1958 follows the harrowing story of two adolescent girls (Blythe Auffarth and Madeline Taylor) who, upon losing their parents in an accident, are sent to live with their Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker), a sadistic psychopath. Unbeknownst to the residents of the small New Jersey suburb, the girls endure unthinkable punishment at the hands of their aunt and three cousins.

All right, so in THIS version of the Likens story, a young girl named Meg (Blythe Auffarth) and her disabled little sister are sent to stay with an aunt after their parents die. Sad enough as it is, right?

Well, things seem shaky from the get-go, as Auntee Ruth is obviously a drunken, foul-mouthed bitch with a bad attitude (normally, qualities that I admire in a person, but not in someone who is charged with raising several children). However, when Meg strikes up a friendship with a clean cut neighborhood boy named David, Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker) , goes full-psycho on us. She starts ranting to her three (or was it four?) redneck, constantly-shirtless, sons about how all women are "sluts" and "harlots," and about how that's exactly what their cousin Meg is, and yada yada yada....


Meg actually shows some spunk at first, even fighting back when Ruth starts going after her little sister, as well; but no -- in the end, our heroine/victim is simply beaten into submission. The situation gets truly dangerous when Ruth's other children get in on the act of abusing their female cousins; the boys even start talking openly of raping Meg, and the mom does nothing about it.

OK, here's where the SPOILERS start arriving....


Things build and build until Ruth and the boys one night string Meg up, naked, in the basement and begin...well, "fondling" her. She's blindfolded and denied food and water; after some time down there, she develops infections....Meg's condition deteriorates quickly under this regimen of abuse, and by the time her cousins start straight up using her as a human punching bag, she's already at death's door.

Neighborhood kids come over to take part in the fun. Yeah, The Girl Next Door features scenes of, like, gaggles of 14 year old boys AND girls standing around watching in amazement as the sons of Ruth beat the living crap out of their undressed, helpless, and obviously dying victim (by the way, this IS what really happened to Sylvia Likens). The only person with any kind of a conscience involved in these shenanigans is the previously-mentioned David, who timidly stands off to the side, and occasionally whimpers, "C'mon, guys....Don't you think maybe we ought to give her a little water or something?" like the pathetic, useless, midget, cockamamie pantywaist that he is.

I mean, REALLY -- this David brat ticked me off. He's obviously deeply troubled by what's being done to poor Meg, but he pussyfoots around on the matter of informing any authorities because, apparently, he's afraid they won't believe him or some such ridiculous crap like that. Yeah. I kept thinking, "You stupid little bastard. TELL SOMEBODY!!!"

(What David might look like.)

Whatever. The film depicts David as though we're supposed to feel sorry for him, but I say the useless galoot should have been prosecuted with the rest of Meg's torturers. I mean, JEBUS, man -- at least tell your parents!

Ahem.

ANYway, as noted, up until this point, The Girl Next Door has been mostly true to the Sylvia Likens story. But, it's at the very end, when the stuff REALLY goes down and the most heart wrenching action begins, that the picture deviates in shocking ways and causes me to question its intentions. Here goes....

(And they're not for the faint of heart.)

Eventually, Aunt Ruth grows bored of simply burning Meg with cigarettes and smacking her around, so she lets her sons start raping the tied up girl. They take turns piling on, like a bunch of wild, greased up pigs, while Ruth argues with them over which one should get the sloppy seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths. But that's not where it ends.

Nope. One day, after (oh, I dunno, let's say) a month and a half of constant torture, Aunt Ruth decides that it's time to physically scar Meg on a more permanent basis. Not only does she carve sexual obscenities into Meg's stomach with a pin, but THEN (get this), she takes a blow torch to...well...Meg's...you know....

All right , all right, all right. Let's be adults here, and speak in medical terms, OK?

WARNING: Don't read on if you're very easily disturbed.

Ruth gives a little speech to her sons about how women need a special part of their vagina (and I'm referring to the clitoris here) in order to truly enjoy "pleasing men," and then specifically uses the above-mentioned blow torch to burn Meg's off for good. Yes, THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS in the film.


...But guess what? -- That DIDN'T happen in the real Sylvia Likens case (at least, from what I've been able to gather). While, indeed, in the REAL situation, Sylvia's privates were badly infected and swollen shut by the time police found her body, they were not quite mutilated in this extreme, and astoundingly sadistic, way. Nor, does it appear as though Sylvia was actually "RAPE-raped" (as Whoopi Goldberg would say). Sure, her torturers had inserted things like Pepsi bottles into her and so forth (which yes, I know, is still rape), but there was no body-to-body penetration going on, as depicted in The Girl Next Door.

So, why did this film's writers and director (Gregory Wilson) feel the need to go THAT FAR??? The true story, as it was, could have been enough to make almost any viewer want to weep. WHO, exactly, thought it was necessary to portray a mother watching her sons gang rape an underage girl? WHO had the wild idea of Ruth delivering a monologue on the female circumcisions performed in many African cultures, designed to prevent girls from becoming "whores"?? Was that in the novel by Jack Ketchum, upon which this particular film is based???

I just have this weird feeling that SOMEONE involved in the production of The Girl Next Door has a sick fetish for that kind of thing, and the Sylvia Likens case merely gave them an outlet for expressing it. I dunno; I realize I'm making some dark accusations and rather large leaps here, but there ARE guys out there who get off on FGM -- I've run into a few of them once or twice when delving deep into the seedier parts of the Internet, and they never fail to creep the heck out of me.


And that's the troubling thing about The Girl Next Door: it would have been heartbreaking enough, simply following the true Sylvia Likens story, yet it takes certain aspects of the ordeal to depraved new depths. Is this exploitation, or simply a tactic to make the horrible tale even more effective?

Because, I'll tell ya -- The Girl Next Door IS an effective film. I walked away feeling a bit numb, with a variety of questions and unsettling thoughts in my mind, and it took me two viewings in a row to wrap the old noggin around what I had just seen. Also, there's no denying that the motion picture is well-made, and slickly shot, with strong performances from most of the cast -- especially Blyth Auffarth, as Meg. I can't believe that this woman was actually much older than the character she portrayed here, and her heroic and poignant presence really tore my heart out by the time the experience was over.

This is brave, gritty filmmaking, to say the least. Although I can't say I enjoyed actually watching it, The Girl Next Door DID get me thinking and feeling big things, so I guess I have no choice but to give it a generally positive rating. After all, I don't know FOR SURE whether those last few items of torture I described here didn't really happen to Sylvia Likens -- it's possible that the public accounts of the case I've been able to rustle up simply left those bits out, for good taste's sake. Maybe I'll never know.

Either way, here's a pretty good account of the true story, for anyone who might be interested:

http://www.indystar.com/article/99999999/NEWS06/80814026/StarFiles-1965-murder-Sylvia-Likens

(The real Sylvia Likens, 1949-1965. May she sleep softly.)

Should you see this movie??? Well, only if you can handle the things I just described (and sorry about the massive spoilers). If that is the case, then it may be worth your while, simply because The Girl Next Door is generally effective and skilled filmmaking -- depraved or not.

3 out of 5.

b.