I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?"


The Girl Next Door (2007)
The Woman (2011)


Sorry Jack Ketchum, you are squarely in my crosshairs today. Both of these movies are classified as 'horror' - I would say they fall better into the category of psychological thrillers. Fictional thrillers. In movies and television a 'bad' movie or show could mean several things. It could mean a bad script, bad actors, bad ideas, bad execution etc. (see The Host). It can also mean there was an original idea, the script was okay and the film halfway decently made but it really shouldn't have been (see Deadgirl). These two films, adaptations of Jack Ketchum's novels are in the latter category.


The Girl Next Door: First, any movie that claims to be 'based on true events' raises an instant red flag with me. There are a lot of movies that claim to be 'true stories' even if they take a tiny grain of an incident and blow it up into 90 minutes of movie. Famous examples: The Exorcist (no, no little girl made beds spin, killed priests and said things like 'Your mother sews socks that smell'  - oh wait, that was an old SNL skit, but better than what she actually said). The reality is that it was a very old, not well documented so-called 'exorcism' of a boy that ended in no deaths. Another is The Amityville Horror - a way overblown treatment of a family's claim of strange noises and one supposed thrown object which could have easily been done by one of the kids. The reality? No flies, no bleeding walls, no father driven to madness to try to kill his family.


Okay, so with the Girl Next Door Jack Ketchum decides to make it as sick as possible. The film is set in 1958 (the actual 'incident' was in 1965) and follows the story of two girls, who are sent to live with their Aunt Ruth Chandler, a sadistic psychopath, and their cousins. David is neighbor to the Chandlers. Aunt Ruth allows the children of the neighborhood to travel freely in and out of her house, offering them beer and cigarettes. Meg (one of the girls) quickly becomes a target to Ruth, who belittles her, making suggestions that she is a whore, and starves her. 

Ruth, her children and their friends tie Meg in the cellar with her hands over her head. The kids of the town treat her like a plaything, beating, cutting and burning her. Sounds like a certain town could use a controlled Nuclear strike about now. David decides (NOW he decides?) to help her escape. The next day, David finds Meg tied to the bed, being raped. Ruth then decides that they should make Meg 'perfect' by giving her a clitorectomy, thus "destroying her desire for men forever." He can only watch helplessly as Meg is mutilated with a blowtorch.

Are we squriming with disgust yet? It gets worse but basically the point is that David tries to get help FINALLY to free Meg but is too late - she has died from her wounds. Did we learn anything except how to lose our lunch? No. Was this scary? No, it was sick. Was there a monster that was eventually vanquished (even if its resurrected for yet another sequel)? We don't know what happens to the sick family. Was it worth anyone's time? Nope. And I doubt that much of it, except for the possible murder itself, was a 'true story.'

The Woman is a sequel to an equally awful film The Offspring - if you've seen that you know that it's about cavemen-like wild people living on the east coast who are also cannibals. Apparently this 'Woman' is the last of them. A seeming normal middle of the road man with a normal middle of the road family captures her for no reason whatsoever, convinced that with 'training' she can become civilized. Why? To make this movie, silly. Jeez, does everything need a logical reason? There are no cops, no doctors, just this seemingly nice guy with a nice family. And the sickness begins. The children are now shown to be clearly damaged, the son a sadistic little bastard, the oldest daughter withdrawn and neglected, the youngest daughter - well, they really don't have much to say about her, the mother being beaten and cowered into 'proper submission' (movie idea, not my opinion).

The Woman is not going to take being chained up in a cellar without a fight. The father's first attempt (oh yes, he is an extremely sadistic bastard and we now know who taught the son his behavior) ends in his ring finger being bitten off. She gleefully chews up his finger and swallows, spitting out the ring. Wow. Let the torture begin. Each family member's true colors come out and it is show that but for the two girls all equally are deserving of about a million volts through the head.

The oldest daughter is actually pregnant. A teacher who can't help but notice her 'baby bump' comes to the house and attempts to talk to the father (who has just beaten his wife so badly she is unconscious in the kitchen). In a fit of rage the father kills the teacher. For the oldest girl, this is the last straw. She runs out to the shed where The Woman is kept, and frees her. The Woman then proceeds to kill the son (yay), the father (big yay) and the ineffective mother (okay). She then grabs the hand of the youngest daughter who smiles up at her and starts to leave. The oldest daughter watches the two of them go, thinks a moment, then joins them. The end. Thank God.

What's the old saying? Just because something can be done doesn't mean that it should. Listen up Mr. Ketchum.