The Girl Next Door

Ah, another movie review.

The Girl Next Door is based on a fictional book by Jack Ketchum that is based on the real life crime of Sylvia Likens. Sylvia was a young sixteen year old girl left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski who ended up torturing the girl leading to her death. This was a huge crime in Indianapolis, so it's a close story to me. I even read the true crime book on this for a school project. I haven't read Ketchum's book, but after getting a Netflix account, I just had to watch this film.

I'm not going to go into too much depth on the movie. If you're familiar with Sylvia's torture than this film plays out a bit of the same. However, they altered the events heavily in order to make it more "shocking". It wasn't really necessary as what Sylvia went through was already horrible. In fact, the movie makes the whole thing worse that I was offended by it.

One of the changes is that they made the girls based off of Sylvia and Jenny, her sister who had polio, orphans. In real life, their parents were carnies who left them in Gertrude's care. The film also makes the children who Gertrude convinced to abuse Sylvia mostly male. Paula, Gertrude's oldest daughter, was one of the biggest aggressors in the case along with other females. They also sexualized the torture way more than what actually happened. The worse thing that happened to Sylvia was Gertrude forced her to strip in front of the kids and shove a Pepsi bottle in her vagina. Twice. And yet this film actually shows the boys raping the girl which never did happen in real life. I found going to this extreme too much. Sylvia faced true suffering and I wish if they were going to retell the story, they wouldn't sensationalize it even more than it has been.

The acting is rather subpar as well. The girl playing Susan, Jenny's fictional counterpart, has literally no expression and emotion. She is just there. Also, the mother I found her sadism a bit too forced. Even though Gertrude was just as mental, Gertrude made way more sense in her ability to convince the kids to abuse Sylvia.

As I had a personal investment in the real crime of Sylvia Likens, this movie offended me on how they had to "spice" it up. I get it's a fictional story based on real events, but it's too exploitative in my opinion. For a much more accurate movie I recommend An American Crime starring Ellen Page. This was closer to the actual events, but I hated how they made Gertrude a sympathetic character.