a review of 邻家女孩

Unlike An American Crime, this one is not trying to depict the actual Sylvia Likens' case, but rather tells a different story inspired by it. That makes it a much lesser offender. The depiction of Gertrude (here named Ruth) is also much more realistic, at least at the beginning. However, it does gradually turn into basically a horror film, with Ruth acting like a supervillain. The true horror of the actual real situation was the mundanity of it. It was something that progressed very slowly over many months, and while Sylvia was being treated in the most inhumane ways possible, these people were living their ordinary lives. The horror, at least from reading the case, is seeing how human psyche morphs over time. I have this idea I call "the threshold theory". The essence of it is that the human psyche is layered with thresholds. The distant thresholds are things you would absolutely never do, like kill somebody, rape somebody, violate their corpse, etc. The thresholds nearest to you are things that you wouldn't normally do, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. For example, you might be thinking you'd never hurt an animal. But then, say you're in a situation where you cross that threshold, either by accident or due to being forced by circumstances. Your psyche eventually absorbs the idea and adapts to it. Now, hurting an animal becomes acceptable and the next threshold is suddenly not so distant anymore. You cross enough thresholds and you end up doing things you would've never done. I think we can see that gradually unravel with the Sylvia Likens case. First occasional humiliation becomes the new norm, then minor acts of violence, then she gets sent to the basement, and so on. Before you know it, seemingly regular people are treating this poor girl in the most monstrous inhumane ways. See, both movies really fail at conveying this slow progression, although this movie did much better than An American Crime. But the fact is still that it escalates too quickly and stops feeling real, and instead begins reminding of something like Hostel. Furthermore, the idea of this one kid still having a conscience and an almost romantic ending is something that didn't happen with the real-life Sylvia. It's not as offensive here because at least this movie doesn't pretend to be telling the real story, but it still takes away from the realism of it. When I first read Sylvia Likens' story, the most inconceivable thing to me was that life. Not necessarily the events themselves, but what happened in between them. The lonely nights in that basement. The dreams of the past. The fear of the future. These things are not captured in this movie. Part of the problem of course is that the protagonist is not the tortured girl, but the boy next door. We only see her from third-person. We really barely get to know her as a person.