The Girl Next Door (2007)

Review by Adam C. Thomas



This movie starts out simple enough. A man is walking to work, and he passes a bum. That bum is then hit by a vehicle, and killed. Pretty basic stuff, really. It then spirals slowly into something sick and twisted.

This movie takes place during the summer of 1958, and is the aforementioned man's telling of his version of what happened that summer. Little Davey is down at the pond, catching crawdads. He doesn't want to eat them, he just enjoys catching them. When a girl comes up and starts talking to him, he begins telling her about them, and then shows her how to catch them herself. He finds out her name is Meg, and that coincidentally, she lives next door to him! How awesome is that, to have a hot chick live next door to you, and a whole summer to get into the same kind of mischief associated with after-school specials? Pretty damn awesome, if you ask me. It also turns out her parents were killed instantly in a car crash, which is why she and her sister live at the house next door to him, which is not so awesome. Her Aunt Ruthie, who is now her caretaker, is one cool old lady, or so it seems. All the boys love hanging out with Aunt Ruthie, she lets them drink beer, and cuss, and everything a growing boy should be doing instead of, ya know, doing young boy things.

All the neighborhood kids have this game, which is basically hide and seek, but instead of tagging people, you pelt them with apples. Oh, and the "it" person is blindfolded, in the middle of the woods, chucking apples at voices and footsteps. There is absolutely no propensity for anything bad to happen here, whatsoever.

I digress.

Aunt Ruthie wants to play the game, too! Why shouldn't she? She's just one of the guys, right? Drinkin', smokin', swearin', heck, she might as well have a penis. However, her version of the game is much more sinister. Instead of just pelting people with apples, she ties Meg up in the basement, and lets the boys do whatever they want to her. When I say whatever they want, I mean anything, including but not limited to: torture, rape, defamation, basically anything these boys can think up, Good Old Aunt Ruthie finds a twisted way to justify it. Oh, and speaking of justification, you want to know her reason for damning this poor girl to a lifetime of misery and torment? Because she is "unclean" and "a whore". Now, Aunt Ruthie has no proof of this, but she just knows, man. She was young once, too, ya know. She knows what little girls do when they start growing up. Once Meg loses the ability to accept any more punishment, what does Aunt Ruthie do to her to make her feel even more pain? She starts beating her little sister, who, by the way, can't walk on her own because she messed up both her knees in the same accident that killed her parents. Needless to say, Aunt Ruthie is a crazy bitch, if you hadn't figured that out by now.

The acting in this one was believable enough, and it was less campy than some other exploitation movies i've seen, but it still wasn't great. The cinematography was sufficient, but it really didn't do anything special or amazing, not that it needed to, but it could have helped. Overall, it's an OK movie, with a pretty good retribution kind of story. If you're into the exploitation stuff, which I most definitely am not, then you might enjoy this one. Otherwise, I'd say skip over it, and go rent something with fluffy bunnies or something.

"The Girl Next Door" is directed by Gregory Wilson, and is based on the book by Jack Ketchum. I give this one a 5/10.