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Title: The Girl Next Door (2007)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| William Atherton | ... | Adult David Moran | |
| Blythe Auffarth | ... | Meg Loughlin | |
| Blanche Baker | ... | Ruth Chandler | |
| Kevin Chamberlin | ... | Officer Jennings | |
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Dean Faulkenberry | ... | Kenny |
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Gabrielle Howarth | ... | Cheryl Robinson |
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Benjamin Ross Kaplan | ... | Donny Chandler (as Ben Kaplan) |
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Spenser Leigh | ... | Denise Crocker |
| Daniel Manche | ... | David Moran | |
| Mark Margolis | ... | Homeless Man Hit By Car | |
| Graham Patrick Martin | ... | Willie Chandler Jr. | |
| Michael Nardella | ... | Tony | |
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Greg Northrop | ... | Police Officer #2 (as Gregory Northtrop) |
| Grant Show | ... | Mr. Moran | |
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Santo Silvestro | ... | Ice Cream Vendor |
In a quiet suburban town in the summer of 1958, two recently orphaned sisters, Meg and disabled Susan are placed in the care of their mentally unstable aunt Ruth. But Ruth's depraved sense of discipline will soon lead to unspeakable acts of abuse and torture that involve her young sons, Willie, Ralphie, and Donny the neighborhood children, and one 12-year-old boy, David whose life will be changed forever.
After a few years when most cinefiles have had the opportunity to view this perverse (Eli Roth, James Wan, Leigh Wannell should bow to this landmark exploitative realist torture porn exercise)freak show, Blanche Baker's performance as the ringleader of some of the most demented and cruel forms of abuse ever depicted on celluloid. Perfectly cast, this once attractive woman has given into her bitterness and misogynistic hatred. (Did I miss any allusions of her hubby(ies) leaving her for other women?) Any vespice of decency has evaporated. Her skin grows more ragged, pale and lined with each cigarette that mephistocoleanly cascades around her heavily made up face. What makes her so mezmerizing is her command of both language and seductive techniques. The children, some of which are devious to be begin with, fall to Ruth's most primitive primeval desires. Although the film respects its victims to never display any of the sexual abuse on-screen, Ruth's permanent content smile serves the salacious quotient. Oh my, and her voice is god-awful pleasant, delicious - akin to a ripe deep red strawberry sliding down your throat. Although heavy-handed (and apparently not historcially accurate) the movie's visual style impressively mocks the pure, clean-living images usually associated with white-bread 1950's Americana. Outside the cemetery-grey basement, the colors are bright, sunny and filled with the promise of budding adolescence. As to keep the audience horrifyingly subjected to Ruth's hold over the children, certain logical problems of prevention - aka either the children or the system preventing Ruth from caring for so many children - arose. Also, the forment of jealousy inside Ruth over Meg's burgeoning good looks, and other situational contexts are dismissed for intimacy concerns. Ummm...not really sure what the bookended present-day scenes served outside to add some fatuous symbolism. The end credits score should have haunted me more.