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Full Reviews (U.S.)
Aintitcool.com - This is based on a true story.
Only someone coming from a background with a history of family
violence could tell you how true. Watching the film, you might
want to tell yourself how it's just a movie, and that they have
exaggerated the events. People couldn't possibly be that
horrible to inflict such abuse and torture on members of their
own family. I'm here to tell you that yes, people really CAN be
that evil. No one could leave the theater with completely dry
eyes after this one, and it is the first I've seen at the
Festival this year that I feel is likely to capture an Oscar.
Read full review...
HorrorTalk.com
- Blanch Barker and Daniel Manche as Aunty Ruth and David were
fantastic, too. Manch does a great job at both selling his puppy
love for Meg and his inner turmoil of not knowing what to do
when it dawn's on him that it's up to him to do something about
the evil going on in front of him. Not only does he not have an
adult he can really turn to (his parents are having their own
issues, and its obvious he doesn't feel he can trust them), but
he'll also be turning in his friends. Manche handles it well...
Read full review...
DreadCentral.com - Film adaptations of books can
go a few different ways, and almost always result in the
comparison "not as good as the book." It’s almost inevitable
that this would happen with The Girl Next Door given how few
stories, in any medium, could have the same nausea inducing,
emotionally draining impact as Jack Ketchum’s 1989 novel. That
said, director Gregory Wilson’s interpretation faithfully
follows Ketchum’s story and structure and fans of the book can
rest assured that the core of the novel remains intact in the
film version.
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BloodyDisgusting.com - Think you know pain? You
don’t know shit. Sylvia Likens knew pain. In 1958 she was locked
in the basement of her foster home, and tortured for weeks and
weeks, until she was dead. She was starved, denied the use of a
bathroom, forced to eat her own excrements, raped, and beaten by
the kids of the neighborhood. Her foster family would invite
kids over from the neighborhood to drink beers, smoke
cigarettes, burn and penetrate a tied up 13 year old girl in the
cellar, as long as they didn’t tell anyone. It went on for
around three months, until poor Sylvia Likens died.
Read full review...
HorrorYearbook.com - Why these scenes are tough
to watch may be why I think the film “works.” I’m a critic at a
horror site, folks. I see depravity, murder and hateful
bloodletting on a seemingly weekly basis. But JACK KETCHUM’S THE
GIRL NEXT DOOR is the only film I’ve seen in my brief tenure
that views torture and denigration as an act of cruelty and
human waste. Not the cheeky sideshow that the Eli Roths of the
world would have you believe it is. After viewing movies like
CAPTIVITY and HOSTEL (Read Royce’s Hostel II Review Here), I
wanted a movie that had the guts to deal with torture.
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Thencccommuter.org - Movie viewers shuddered in
their seats as they gazed at the screen, watching the atrocities
being committed. Some shuddered, some bristled, as they viewed
"The Girl Next Door," wondering how one human being could be so
cruel to another. The movie, available on DVD, is based on the
book of the same name by Jack Ketchum. The book is based on the
real-life events of the murder and torture of Sylvia Marie
Likens.
Read full review...
HouseofHorrors.com - You ever see that Stephen King
flick - Stand By Me? I just spent two hours with some kids just
like the ones in that film. The only thing is, instead of taking
a walk down the tracks and checkin out a dead body, I watched
them rape and beat the shit out of a young teenage girl! They
made up their own reasons, and beat and bruised and broke and
burned and defiled and cut her until she was dead. She was only
15 or 16. She never did anything wrong to deserve it. But they
stripped her naked, burned words into her - she was tied up in a
basement and all the kids in the neighborhood came over and did
whatever they wanted!
Read full review...
PennyBlood.com - Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is
one of the most disturbing, taboo-shattering horror movies to
come along in recent memory. Films like SAW and HOSTEL aim
desperately high towards the target of controversy, hoping to
wow the audience with shock and awe. But, their hearts are more
in the studio pocketbook than in the guts of the audience. To
truly shock someone, you first need to be willing to offend
them, not just make them wince. You have to think beyond “what
is the coolest way to cut someone’s finger off?
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Creature-Corner.com - Ketchum took the story, set it in
the more innocent times of the 50s, and led us into the mind of
a poor neighborhood kid who couldn't do anything to stop the
horrors going on next door. It's an amazing book- probably
Ketchum's best. It's one of those stories that gives you knots
in your stomach as you read it.
Read full review...
Full Reviews (Foreign)
Mannbeisstfilm.de - With 'Jack Ketchum's The Girl
Next Door' a certainly very controversial film has been created.
Child protectors will probably get gray hairs. The film pulls
the viewer under and delivers him a kick in the stomach, without
however celebrating violence, quite the contrary. One is tense
on how and in what form the film reveals itself. In my view
there are in fact very few negatives. The screener version was
used for this review.
Conclusion: A shocking, brutal, cruel Film. But also an
important, heavyweight, magnificently acted, wonderful love
storied, deeply touching Film. A film, which one definitely does
not watch with pleasure, but which emotionally rewards the
viewer.
A masterpiece.
Read full review...
(in German) |
