Disturbing in ways unintended

When I first heard someone mention "The Girl Next Door," I mistakenly thought of the somewhat amusing "Risky Business" clone and Elisha Cuthbert vehicle of the same name. Now that I've seen this version, I sort of wish I'd remained mistaken.

Two parts torture porn and one part after school special, The Girl Next Doortells the troubling tale of David (Daniel Manche), his loathsome neighbors and the unfortunate young girls who are forced to live with them.

Perhaps the worst part is how long the film takes to decide what it wants to be. Once it decides, it gives us little else but morbid fascination to stay tuned.

In a pointless and empty gesture, the film uses the horrid "book end" device. This attempts to demonstrate how supposedly horrible adult David's (William Atherton, "Real Genius," "Ghost Busters," "Die Hard") life has become because of the dark secrets of his past. Atherton has made a career out of playing, well...a prick, and he scores again. Not because of what happened to his character, but because he expects pity.

The main crux of the story is a flashback to David's childhood. A young girl named Meg (Blythe Auffarth) moves in next door and David instantly strikes up an innocent friendship with her while catching crawfish. In one of the film's better moments, the filmmakers create a feeling of childlike wonder and possibility, while alluding to the darker undertones of how mysterious and unfair life can be.

The neighborhood is filled with children. In fact, David learns that Meg and her sister have been placed in the foster care of his neighbor Ruth, (an almost unrecognizable Blanche Baker - much, much more pleasant in "Sixteen Candles") and her sons. The children in the neighborhood play games that border on abusive in the woods, and seem to enjoy humiliation and ridicule as part of the fun. But Meg and her sister, who wears braces on her legs due to polio, are segregated from the group by Ruth. This makes them something different, outsiders not even worthy of the ridicule and hazing they enact on each other.

Meg sees David from time to time, but it's quickly clear that she's unlike the other children. She exhibits a strange combination of spaced out innocence and weight-of-the-world stress no child should ever know.

David learns that Meg is being mistreated by Ruth, an evil, seemingly insane wretch who gladly serves up beer to her young sons and their friends. What's worse is her damaging advice on the ways of the world. She not only takes any chance to verbally humiliate the girl in front of the boys, but refuses to feed Meg because she is "fat."

Ruth allows the boys to roughhouse and pick on Meg incessantly and flip flops between refusing to treat the two sisters as girls and telling them what they will certainly grow up to be (a word I am blocked from using here).

We are not shown enough as to why David doesn't tell his parents what's going on next door. Yes, children are susceptible to manipulation and fear plays a huge part, but we needed to see more of his internal struggle. A few attempts of David trying to bring up the subject of the torture going on next door are made, but it's handled much too casually. David is not really threatened until the end of the film, which makes his silence all the more confusing.

Although we're told this is based on a true story, the filmmakers seem to rely on this fact alone and fail to develop sympathy, empathy or motivation.

We don't see inner turmoil in the characters, specifically the other children who witness these heinous events. Children will fall prey to peer pressure, but they're also bad at hiding their feelings, especially fear.

Only once is there a glance between girls watching these atrocities that conveys: "Hey, that could be us next. Maybe we should tell somebody."

Unfortunately, Auffarth does her best acting once the story takes its downward turn. Manche is the only actor who adds life to the film, and even he could have used better direction.

David shows guilt and regret, but his journey isn't developed very well. There is a unique relationship between he and Meg, and he still fails to do anything until it's way too late. Is this because he's confused by sexual desire for Meg and the fact that Ruth is delivering a sexual fantasy to him on a twisted silver platter? Is he deriving some warped pleasure by witnessing this perversion? Does he want to participate? Is he immobilized by deep-seeded feelings of guilt?

We'll never know, because the filmmakers don't take us there. Instead, they sell us entry to a perverted peep show where the real freaks are the ones running the show. The sad part is, we're just as bad as the twisted young boys poking and prodding this helpless, innocent young woman. On second thought, maybe we're worse. We paid admission.