Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door (2007)

This is one of those traumatizing movies that you wish you had never seen because you can't get the images out of your head, but at the same time, couldn't tear your eyes away from the horror as it was happening. Warning, not for youth or the easily disturbed.

This majority of this film is told via a flashback of one summer a man named David had in his childhood. David lived in a normal, suburban neighbourhood in the 50's. He was an only child, but got along well with and spent a lot of time with the other boys in his neighbourhood, especially his next door neighbours, a group of boys living with their single mother, Ruth. David's life changed forever the summer that two girls moved into the house next door. Their parents were both killed in a car crash (the younger sister was crippled and required leg braces) and Ruth was their next of kin. The girl's name is Meg and David is taken with her from the moment he lays eyes on her.

David tries to get inconspicuously closer to Meg, but as he spends more time at his neighbour's house, he sees more and more tension between Meg and her Aunt Ruth. At first it's small things like making snide comments about her 'delicate womanhood' or implying that she's a slut. David can tell there is tension, but it just seems uncomfortably out of place, they're just words after all. Things change when one day David comes over and sees Meg's cousins tickling her and one of them touches her breast. The tickling was unwanted, but after the touch Meg shoved the boy to the floor, who then went to tell his mother. Here Ruth starts being physical, but not to Meg. She instead beats Meg's younger sister, who is crippled, as a punishment to Meg. Subtle but severe power struggles such as this continue between Ruth and Meg, Meg having no choice but to succumb to Ruth in order to save her sister. A few days later at an outing, Ruth's boys spot Meg speaking with a police officer who stops by the house to check up on the situation, and here is where it gets a bit uncomfortable. Ruth feels that for her own safety, she must now be much more severe with Meg, which means ordering that Meg be tied up in the basement, hanging from the ceiling. At first, she is just left there, not given enough food, bruises and rope-burns covering her body, but it of course escalates. David watches, horrified, while all of this is going on. He feels that he can't do anything to stop it, that no one would believe him if he were to tell, and yet he doesn't want to abandon Meg. At one point, when she's half destroyed, he sneaks down into the basement and releases her, but instead of running to her freedom, she is caught once again by trying to take her sister away with her. This is where the other half of her gets worked on. Will Meg ever escape? Will David be able to save her? Do you want to know badly enough to risk seeing these images that may never leave you... in the worst sense possible?

I have mixed feelings about this film. It was definitely well done, lets start with that. The acting, cinematography, storytelling; all good. The subject matter however, is really uncomfortable. Throughout the film, the neighbourhood boys are all portrayed as either having these mean tendencies, or not caring enough about another human being to go against the crowd. In fact, excluding David, the boys are all quite taken with the idea of having Meg tied up in the basement, and practically jump over each other to carry out their mother's twisted orders. The other kids from the neighbourhood are no better. There's one scene, the worst one, where a whole bunch of kids come and watch/ help carry out the atrocities done to Meg. Boys and girls come to watch. Ruth is also a really twisted person, which is revealed ever more so as the film progresses. We aren't given much of a back story on her, but it's almost as if she's dead inside and tries kill what light she can see in others. There is physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse in this film. Every so often, I look for psychologically disturbing films. It's something that just morbidly fascinates me, the idea of insanity, or the lengths someone will go to harm someone else, or the motivation behind such actions, or how someone could actually endure something like that. Well on that front this film delivers... too well.

The most disturbing thing about this film is that it's based on a true story. There was a real girl named Silvia Likens who endured some of the same atrocities as were displayed in the film, worse in fact. An American Crime, with Ellen Page, is another film dealing with this case and it retells the story in a way that is closer to the actual events. It is a little more tame in comparison with this, and maybe the go to film if you still want to hear the story without the potential psychological scarring.

If you're in that mood, I recommend this film, but if not... then you probably won't enjoy it, and that might be an understatement.

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

I was in a minor state of depression after reading this book. It only took me an hour to read, and for about an hour after I was lamenting having read it...but not in a this book was horrible' way, but more in appreciation of the horror.

We have all heard about those sick cases where some pedophile man abducts a young girl and has his way with her, whether it was an adult warning you as a child or a story in the news, we all know it exists, and if you heard about it in the news you know that it's more than a ghost story. This book is told from the perspective of a girl who was taken and who has had to live with her captor for 5 years while he raped, starved and abused her every day for that five years. The book isn't very graphic as to the details of these events, it's a book for teens, but the reader knows what's going on.

The telling of the story is very distant and choppy and the story sporadically alternates between the present, the past, and the girl's thoughts, which effectively allows the reader to loose track of the days as well as to get a sense of the state of mind the girl is in as she tells you her story.

I don't know if this story is based on real life events or if this character was just imagined, but by reading this I could better understand how a person could be convinced to stay in such a circumstance. Typically when confronted with a case like this you ask yourself 'Why didn't she just leave? Why would she stay in that situation and not try to escape?' and more terrifying, you think that in a similar situation you would never act the victim. But the way this story is presented allows the reader to sympathize with the girl's position, and not just take note of the suffering she's undergone. There's one part where the girl is watching a talk show with people who had undergone abuse on it. the host asks the woman why she stayed with whoever was abusing her and the audience all yells that she should have done something about it and the woman nervously concedes the point. At this the girl points out to the readers that the woman is still the broken shell of a person she was when she was being abused because she meekly gives the audience what they want (as she most likely gave in to whoever abused her) and says that yes she probably should have done something. The audience yells out to the girl because they can see that she is weak and that they are in a position of power, and would not want that power taken away so almost blame the woman for what happened to her. That part of the book is where I think the author is speaking directly to the reader, telling you to reassess your initial impressions because these people who have undergone this abuse do not think like you do while you're sitting on your couch casually passing judgements on how these people could have avoided this abuse (as if it was their fault) ... And yet, even though you are not undergoing the severity of abuse that this person has suffered, you too play with whatever power you have at the expense of others in order to ensure your own comfort. This sentiment is found throughout story.

As for the plot itself, I won't go into too much detail as you probably can guess they story before you read it.. it's a living nightmare we can only imagine. The story begins after approximately five years of this girl's captivity, though she reminisces for you every now and again so that you know how she got to be where she is. Her captor's name is Ray and he named her Alice. He had an abusive childhood himself so is sort of messed up and wants Alice to be an eternal child, therefore he starves her to keep her thin. He also sleeps with her almost every night. When this first happened in the book, I was sort of taken aback because I didn't think the story would go that way.. or at least not so suddenly, but Alice was very calm. Her recounting of the events in the story always sound sort of calm, detached almost,  because she's grown accustomed to her situation. That is not to say that she likes her situation, many times she tells us how she's tried to suffocate or drown herself or how she wishes for death. She hates where she is, but has come to know it as her reality. An odd testament to the resilience of human beings.

I've always been somewhat critical of girls who pay too much attention to their looks and to boys and such, but after reading this, that's exactly what I wanted this girl to become, or had the chance to become. A girl just like every other girl who has nothing more important to worry about than her hair or her nail polish. What she might have become if she hadn't been abducted.

This book hooked me from the first page, and thank goodness it was only 100 something pages because once you start reading it, you have to get to the ending. Overall this was a thought provoking book about the power relations you have with others. What 'power' actually is and the potential effect exerting that power over others might have. This story was like an emotional bludgeon. It will leave you wanting more while making you wish you knew less. A horrifying journey through the life and thoughts of a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.