In the summer of 1958, in a suburban town, two orphan girls are being abused and tortured by the very people who were meant to look after them.
Unbearable to watch!
With horror still thriving – equal parts triumphs and misfires – I found myself returning to a film that once left me staring at the world a little differently. Darker. Heavier. And yes, that film is The Girl Next Door.
Because what it depicts is not supernatural terror, nor stylised brutality. It is something far worse: unfathomable, soul-shattering human depravity. Think of it as a psychopathic version of Stand by Me (1986). And I do not say that lightly. Director Gregory Wilson, adapting Jack Ketchum’s novel through the screenplay by Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman, constructs something deceptively simple. The film begins innocently, with a coming-of-age tone. There is no overt stylistic flourish, no cinematic excess. If anything, it is sequential, almost plain. As in, nothing to talk about cinematically.
And that is its most disturbing achievement – intentional or unintentional, not sure. Halfway through, something shifts. Not abruptly, but gradually. A creeping unease settles in. You begin to sense that something is wrong – terribly wrong. Yet the environment feels too ordinary, too populated, too… safe. You will find telling yourself, “Whatever happens, it won’t be that bad.”
But it is. And then it gets worse. And worse. And worse. The horror escalates with the same flatness in rhythm, the same emotional limitation. There is no dramatic cue telling you when to react. No catharsis. Just an unbearable progression that forces a scream inside you: “Why doesn’t someone do something?!” And when the answer comes, you deny that this has ever happened. That people actually did what they did.
This is one of the rare films that truly deceives its audience. It lures you in under the guise of familiarity and then confronts you with something you cannot process. The same lens that captures children enjoying ice cream and summer also captures the monstrous depths of human cruelty. No spectacle – only substance.
At this point, I should take my hat off to the actors and actresses who were there throughout and made the film possible with their performances. And above all, Blythe Auffarth, who was at the centre of it all and made us all feel like apologising to her for not being able to do anything to stop this. Yeah, that bad!
Few films achieve this level of existential disturbance and have made me feel in ways I never thought I could feel while watching a film. Earthlings (2005): https://kaygazpro.com/earthlings-2005/ and Martyrs (2008): https://kaygazpro.com/martyrs-2008-horror/ come to mind – films that make you question not just actions, but humanity itself. Whether we are, in fact, deserving of the name.
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Solidarity for all the innocent lives that suffer the atrocities of war!
Stay safe!
