File this one under movies I’ll never watch again.  If you don’t know anything about it, The Girl Next Door (2007) is a film based on Jack Ketchum’s novel about the torture, mutilation, rape, and abuse of a young girl by her aunt and a group of neighborhood boys in 1950′s New Jersey.  I’m somewhat proud to say that I have one of the strongest stomachs for any type of depravity put to film but this one crossed some lines for me.

After their parents are killed in a car crash, 16-year-old Meg and 10-year-old Susan Laughlin (Blythe Auffarth and Madeline Taylor) are sent to live with their aunt, Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker) and her children in New Jersey.  The film is set in the 1950′s and director Gregory Wilson perfectly sets the scene using the things my generation has come to view as that era’s nostalgia – Ford Mustangs, ice cream trucks, shorts above the knee on boys, and cans of Yuengling beer.  David Moran (Daniel Manche), the film’s main character, meets Meg as he’s collecting crayfish down by a local river.  The two instantly form a bond and it seems as though David may become a stable friend for Meg in her fragile state.

However, it’s instantly established that Ruth is a severely disturbed woman who acts as the “cool parent” in the neighborhood, giving her children and their friends cigarettes and beer, and lessons on how women are innately whores.  She is verbally abusive to Meg and Susan (who has to wear leg braces due to the car accident), at one point calling the latter “a stupid little shit” because she isn’t an efficient helper around the house.  One look at this woman and you know she’s not right in the head but all of the neighborhood boys love her because of her whimsical parenting.  Perhaps what is most disturbing (initially, at least – it gets a hell of a lot worse) is Ruth’s open display/talk of sexuality in front of her own children.  Early on, the movie has this incestuous/sexual vibe that is so creepy because it’s involving children.

The neighborhood boys jump on Ruth’s abusive bandwagon and begin tormenting the two girls physically and verbally.  David, who is fond of Meg, feels powerless to do anything about it because of peer pressure and fear of Ruth’s authority.  Things take a significant turn for the worse after the boys try to tickle Meg and she scratches Ruth’s youngest son on the face.  She runs out of the house so Ruth decides to make Susan suffer for her sister’s actions.  In the film’s first truly uncomfortable scene, Ruth bends the 10-year old (clad in her leg braces) over the bed, pulls down her underwear and strikes her 15 times with a toilet brush as the group of boys watch.  Meg rushes in to save her sister but is violently held back by the boys.  It was during this scene that I first got that sinking feeling in my chest.  I don’t think that feeling left until the movie was over.

The next day, Meg tells this story to a police officer who pays Ruth a visit off camera.  Ruth is clearly able to assure police that Meg was exaggerating and she escapes justice.  This incident enrages Ruth and she multiplies her brutality by 1,000.  With the help of the boys, she ties up Meg in the basement naked, blindfolded and gagged her under the guise of getting her to confess her whore-like behavior.  I won’t go much further into the plot than to say that over the course of a few days, Ruth and the boys enact the most heinous of torture upon Meg, burning her with cigarettes, and just beating her senseless.  Stop reading here if you don’t want any more torture spoilers or are squeamish.

By far the most disturbing scene involves Ruth’s older son raping Meg in front of her younger sister and a crowd of neighborhood children.  Her younger son (about 11-years-old) pleads to “let me fuck her, mom” but Ruth draws the line there saying that would be incesteous.  Following the rape, Ruth carves “I am a whore” into her abdomen with a knife while receiving enthusiastic encouragement from the other kids.  After a moment’s thought, Ruth realizes that even though men will not want a woman with this message carved in her stomach, Meg may still feel the desire to be with men.  The solution to that?  Burn off her clitoris with a blow torch.  Yeah, I actually just typed that.  This type of stuff goes on until the film’s close.

Good thing we can just sit back after viewing this abhorrent imagery and say “thank God it’s only a movie,” right?  Wrong.  What’s profoundly disturbing about this movie is that it is based on actual events that occurred in Indiana during the mid-60′s.  Gertrude Baniszewski, a once-abused wife and mother of six, took in 16-year-old Sylvia and 15-year-old Jenny Likens as boarders while their parents traveled around the state with a carnival.  Once her parents stopped sending their payment of $20/week, Sylvia Likens began being abused and tortured by Baniszewski and neighborhood kids.  She was chained up in the basement and much of the torture depicted in The Girl Next Door actually happened.  You can read the whole sickening story here.

This film really touched a nerve with me because of its unrelenting sexual violence toward children.  It’s profoundly disturbing to watch – far worse than something like Martyrs, which focused more on physical violence and gore.  The violence in The Girl Next Door, while physical, is also strongly emotional.  Just watching how a group of people can be complicit while atrocities are being committed in front of them is more unnerving than any blood-splattered Jason kill because it has a basis in reality.  The most obvious example is of course, the Holocaust but this kind of stuff happens regularly.  Look no further than the recent California gang rape where more than 10 people watched without doing anything.

On a critical level, The Girl Next Door is a fantastic film.  The performances by the child actors and Baker are top-notch.  Coupled with Wilson’s excellent pacing and Daniel Farrands/Philip Nutman’s screenplay, it’s hard to find a more harrowing tale in recent years.  That said, I’ll never watch this again but I’m glad I did once.