The Girl Next Door

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B P @Bradster69 Aug 31, 2026 Not Bad, but Not My Favorite See more Petw P @RT78756982 Apr 11, 2026 It was the Worst Movie ive seen in a While its only Making you Angry Watching it and the End isnt Good. For my Opinion i think its the worst movie of its Release Year 0/10 dont watch See more Nina G @niinaql Apr 5, 2026 This movie is absolutely disgusting. The elements in this movie are hard to watch. Its a very well made film, but its horrifically graphic and not something you should watch if you get disturbed easily. Never watching this again! See more Steven F. @SteveGotScored Feb 19, 2026 A very well made movie of a tragic story! See more Barry N @JustMe1216 Sep 27, 2025 This movie is disgusting! Hard to believe it's as recent as 2007. It's not believable that David wouldn't have reported this torture almost immediately and saved that poor girl, someone he cared for, from all that pain and suffering. Just horrible!!! See more Rotten T @RT80537573 Sep 21, 2025 This movie was not nearly as disturbing as I had been led to believe. I'm guessing the viewers who are calling this "unwatchable" or "deeply disturbing" are not well versed in the true crime genre. The film is of course upsetting because it's based on a true story, but the reality of the true story behind this film is far more horrific than how it is portrayed in this film. I found the Wikipedia article about the actual victim (Sylvia Likens) to be more traumatizing than this film. In that way, this film is actually a toned down, almost sugar-coated version of the facts (as strange as that may sound). I won't rehash the plotline, but I will say that it has more of a story and setup than I expected. Somehow I was expecting a torture fest from beginning to end, yet it was anything but. Stephen King nailed it when he called this film "The dark side of 'Stand By Me'". Ultimately the point this film is making is that adults can be incredibly evil and manipulative - especially over children, who are oftentimes powerless when confronted by these types of adults. Yet it offers no answers as to why, nor how we as a society can prevent such horrifying incidents. My main criticism of the film is that it is missing several scenes: 1) How and why the two girls went to live with this "aunt" in the first place. 2) The aunt's backstory, providing her motivation for cruelty. 3) The gradual way the aunt convinces so many other children to partake in the violence without alerting authorities. The torture of this poor girl escalates so quickly that it seemingly comes out of nowhere. There should have been much more exposition and ramping up of the aunt's sadism. At only 90 minutes in length, an extra 10-15 minutes of setup would have vastly improved the audience's understanding of this cruel women's motivations and how the other children became complicit. That, after all, is the real story here: how and why so many children came to participate in these acts of cruelty, with not a single one of them alerting their parents or the police. After all, it's not difficult to believe that one sick person could do these things to one poor girl. But that so many other innocents were manipulated into becoming sadistic torturers themselves needs a thorough examination, which this film does not fully explore. As a result, we are left feeling not just sickened but also bewildered at the grotesque spectacle of it all. If you are well versed in the horror genre, this film will seem relatively tame to you compared to other entries in the "torture porn" genre (which I do not think this film qualifies for). If you mainly watch offerings from the Lifetime Channel, the Hallmark Channel, and Disney, then you probably want to avoid this one. As for me, this film is nowhere near as brutal and disturbing as a film like Martyrs. See more Read all reviews

The Girl Next Door

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