Though most horror films, specifically those easily classified into this sometimes limiting genre, deal with a "monster" and "victim" (or, to be less simplistically specific, "predator" and "prey"), but rarely are these roles so effectively amorphis, and in such a way that allows the film to retain these antithetical distinctions between characters and the archetypes they subsequently come to embody.
******Spoilers******
On this psychological battlefield, the "monster," in traditional fashion, is seemingly invincible, implacable and difficult, if not impossible, to elude. She is a 14 year old girl, endowed with the intellect and patience of an adult, but driven by the fantastical idealism, the unchecked passion and, most importantly (if it is to be interpreted as a horror film), the giddy sadism of a child. This "monster" is deaf to the pleas of her "victim," who occupies this status because of his perceived (and, at this point, former) role as "monster," in the form of a sex offender and probable murderer. While "Haley" (her name a fabrication like all other information Jeff has come to know about her, thus adding to her terrifying mystique. All he is able to know definitively is the pain she inflicts and the end she has devised for him) lacks the physical prowess of her male counterpart (equivalent?), she must compensate with cunning, the almost supernatural like of which Jeff could never have imagined, and it is this fatal assumption that proves his tragic flaw, akin to the unexpected detour taken by a car-load of impending corpses in standard horror fare. Yes, she has a "reason" for what she does, but does not even the most savage serial killer have some arbitrary justification to which s/he might lay claim? In this case, her reasons lie only in hearsay and inference, like those of the paranoiac confusing all women with his abusive mother, and the director only serves to increase the horror of Jeff's plight.
Is Jeff a rapist and murderer guilty of preying on innocence? Obviously. From a standpoint of pure judicial evaluation, there is "justice," but as this is a horror film, concerned not with form but on content, we are presented with an unrelenting reversal of the torture killing we've come to expect from Jeff's character, with no visceral depiction of the latter's guilt to check and balance the onslaught. We never SEE him harm anyone (save through minor acts of dubious self-defense long after he has endured the gauntlet), but we are offered no respite from the methodical destruction of HIS life, on every level (including the destruction of his bond with the one person for whom he has human feelings). Never is he allowed to inflict the agony to which we've seen him subjected on this near-mythic avenger of children (who, like most horror-movie killers, has lost moral high-ground in her descent to the level of the abuser), and he is denied redemption as well as reprieve, in the uncompromising fashion more becoming a snuff film than a psychological revenge treatise.
In the end, we are not left with a balanced conflict, but rather an appropriately one-sided display of weakness taunted, battered and ultimately destroyed at the hands of the strong, who killed out of pleasure.
******Spoilers******
On this psychological battlefield, the "monster," in traditional fashion, is seemingly invincible, implacable and difficult, if not impossible, to elude. She is a 14 year old girl, endowed with the intellect and patience of an adult, but driven by the fantastical idealism, the unchecked passion and, most importantly (if it is to be interpreted as a horror film), the giddy sadism of a child. This "monster" is deaf to the pleas of her "victim," who occupies this status because of his perceived (and, at this point, former) role as "monster," in the form of a sex offender and probable murderer. While "Haley" (her name a fabrication like all other information Jeff has come to know about her, thus adding to her terrifying mystique. All he is able to know definitively is the pain she inflicts and the end she has devised for him) lacks the physical prowess of her male counterpart (equivalent?), she must compensate with cunning, the almost supernatural like of which Jeff could never have imagined, and it is this fatal assumption that proves his tragic flaw, akin to the unexpected detour taken by a car-load of impending corpses in standard horror fare. Yes, she has a "reason" for what she does, but does not even the most savage serial killer have some arbitrary justification to which s/he might lay claim? In this case, her reasons lie only in hearsay and inference, like those of the paranoiac confusing all women with his abusive mother, and the director only serves to increase the horror of Jeff's plight.
Is Jeff a rapist and murderer guilty of preying on innocence? Obviously. From a standpoint of pure judicial evaluation, there is "justice," but as this is a horror film, concerned not with form but on content, we are presented with an unrelenting reversal of the torture killing we've come to expect from Jeff's character, with no visceral depiction of the latter's guilt to check and balance the onslaught. We never SEE him harm anyone (save through minor acts of dubious self-defense long after he has endured the gauntlet), but we are offered no respite from the methodical destruction of HIS life, on every level (including the destruction of his bond with the one person for whom he has human feelings). Never is he allowed to inflict the agony to which we've seen him subjected on this near-mythic avenger of children (who, like most horror-movie killers, has lost moral high-ground in her descent to the level of the abuser), and he is denied redemption as well as reprieve, in the uncompromising fashion more becoming a snuff film than a psychological revenge treatise.
In the end, we are not left with a balanced conflict, but rather an appropriately one-sided display of weakness taunted, battered and ultimately destroyed at the hands of the strong, who killed out of pleasure.