Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door Review:
In all my years of being a horror/film fan I have searched for the Holy Grail of films. My definition of this is a film that can truly manipulate my feelings and make feel something that I don't or wouldn't usually feel such as disgust or horror.
The closest I have ever come to these feelings have been while watching a faces of death or Canniabal Holocaust that features real animal torture and brutality. While these scenes certainly brought out anger and disgust it always felt so canned and cheap....Kind of like seeing our troops slaughtered on the nightly news, you feel effected but at the same time you also feel numb to it as the violence is so far away and just doesnt have the same effect as if you knew those people personally and on another level.
This brings us to the release of Jack Ketchum's "The Girl Next Door"..... I had never read the book so I knew nothing of the story that was about to unfold. I read the quotes on the front cover of the DVD by stephen king that read "The first authentically shocking american film I've seen since "Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer" (still my favorite film for many years now) over 20 years ago. If you are easily disturbed you should not watch this movie." and this quote by WBAI-FM " A Haunting adaption of a pwerful novel about the darker side of america and innocence destroyed." Then finally the one that scared me the most as it is way too overused nowdays and usually means the filmmakers are trying to cover up a bad movie with the use of the line "Inspired By Actual Events".
So needless to say I already had reservations about the validity of this film before even popping it into my DVD player. Add in the oft used ploy of child abuse which it seemed this film was mostly going to be about and I thought for sure I was about to watch a film with no valid content in it what-so-ever besides to try and shock. |