The Girl Next Door

No, this isn’t a review of that Elisha Cuthbert movie where she is the ex-pornstar neighbor of some horny kid and she never shows off her breasts even though she was a pornstar and everyone knows that pornstars walk around topless all the time and the movie turns out to be a major suckfest because she doesn’t even give a glimpse of boobage; this is a review of the film adaptation of a book of the same name written by Jack Ketchum in the 1980’s. Again, Elisha Cuthbert is not in this…she’s in that terrible movie Captivity that I reviewed here a while back. Don’t see that one. Go away, Elisha. The film that I am reviewing here is serious business.

“You think you know about pain?” I read Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door a couple of years ago when it was finally re-released by Leisure Books. Leisure has been re-releasing all of Ketchum’s work in mass-market paperback. I love Leisure (check them out here). Ketchum is my favorite horror author. His books are intense, scary, morbid, and depressing. The Girl Next Door is easily his most disturbing work and is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. It follows the story of a young boy named David Moran who lives in a small suburban community in the 1950’s. He meets a teenage girl and her younger sister who have been placed in the care of his neighbors (the Chandlers) following the death of the girls’ parents. He develops a friendship with (and a crush on) the older of the two girls, Meg Laughlin. Meg’s younger sister, Susan, was seriously injured in the car accident that killed her parents; she has to wear those leg brace things that were commonly used for polio patients.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that the family that is taking care of the girls is not very nice (understatement). The single mother, Ruth Chandler (played brilliantly by Blanche Baker), takes out her frustrations on the girls. Her three sons and some other neighborhood kids start playing games with Meg, which escalate in their perversion and cruelty. Ruth allows and encourages the brutal behavior. She even offers suggestions for the types of punishment that the girls “deserve”. All of this goes on in the quiet suburban neighborhood and none of the other residents take notice. David witnesses the atrocious acts but remains silent about them, not sure if he should report Ruth to the police, not sure if he should step in and try to prevent further harm to the girls. He’s trapped in a difficult situation.

The movie adaptation of the book remains true to the text. It’s a harsh viewing experience. I watched it having already read the book; I knew what to expect and I was still shocked. That’s a testament to the strength of the story. This is an extremely low-budget film. Sometimes the acting is corny (towards the beginning of the film), sometimes the lighting is bad, but when the poo-poo hits the proverbial fan, you forget about all of that and are transported into this nightmarish world. You feel sympathy for the girls and hate for Ruth and her sons and her sons’ friends and anger and frustration that what you are watching is something that could happen and it turns out that it’s something that did happen, that it’s loosely based on a true story, the story of Sylvia Marie Likens (which you can read about here but I’d suggest doing so only after seeing the movie or reading the book).

The Girl Next Door is a horror film that is actually horrific. It makes you want to turn away. It’s scary without jump scares and audio cues. It’s violent without buckets of blood. I recommend reading the book first because it does a better job of letting you get inside David’s head, to understand why he makes certain decisions or behaves in certain ways. In a story like this, the characters thoughts are as important as their actions; it’s too bad that the film medium can’t accomplish this as easily as the written word. That’s not to take anything away from the script writers; they did a great job with the adaptation.

Supposedly there are a couple more film adaptations of Jack Ketchum’s novels out there. The Lost has been done for a while. It played a few small film festivals but has yet to be released on DVD. Red just played at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I’ve heard good things about The Lost; we’ll see about Red. Both books are definitely worth reading. It’s a good time to jump on the Jack Ketchum bandwagon.

PS: A movie based on the actual crime was also released last year…it’s called An American Crime and has some big name actors in it (including the Juno girl). It played at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. I haven’t heard anything about it. I’ll watch for a theatrical or DVD release date.