The Girl Next Door Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Another Jack Ketchum Novel to Hit the Screen: 'Offspring'
Filed under: Horror », Independent »
When someone who's read hundreds of horror novels says something like "Jack Ketchum is one of the best authors out there," you might want to bring up a few titles on Amazon and maybe snag a tome or two. (That's if you're looking for horror fiction in the first place, obviously.) Over the last few years, we've (finally!) seen several of the author's works transformed into indie flicks, and I'd say those filmmakers are presently three-for-three! (Those films would be The Lost, The Girl Next Door, and Red.)So it's with no small amount of nerdly excitement that I read the following over at Dread Central: Looks like the guys behind the harrowing Girl Next Door are about to tackle Offspring, a 1991 Ketchum "crazy cannibal" novel that is actually the follow-up to the truly disturbing Off Season. (And I mean "disturbing" as a compliment.) But why would producer Andrew van den Houten start with Part 2 instead of Part 1? I assume it has something to do with rights issues -- as in "someone else probably owns the rights to Part 1" -- but Shock's Ryan Rotten very astutely makes the same point that I was going to make: That if someone did Off Season straight from the book, it'd look a whole LOT like Wrong Turn or yet another rendition of The Hills Have Eyes. Kind of a shame, really, but you can always read the book.
For more on the brutally memorable work of Jack Ketchum, check out his official site right here.
Indies on DVD: 'Antonia,' 'Czech Dream,' 'The Way I Spent the End of the World'
Filed under: New on DVD », Home Entertainment », Cinematical Indie »
My pick of the week comes from Brazil: Antonia. Directed by Tata Amaral, Antonia is an engaging, low-key pleasure about four women that live in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood in São Paolo but have dreams of fame and fortune. As I've written before, "the beauty of Antonia is its down-to-earth nature. These women are not super-heroines, nor do they expect any special treatment just because they can sing like angels. They just want a fair shake." The DVD includes a behind the scenes feature and a music video.From the Eastern European front, both Czech Dream and The Way I Spent the End of the World have received good critical notices. Czech Dream is perhaps best described as a subversive, activist documentary look at the dangers of rampant consumerism, while End of the World is a "tragic-comic coming-of-age tale." DVD details on both titles are scarce.
An early, entirely distasteful scene in Drama/Mex soured me on the film, yet others have been won over by its stylish excess and primal urgency in telling three related stories in a seaside town. DVD details are not available. Cinematical's Jette Kernion called The Girl Next Door "nightmare-inducing," and not in a good way; it's a family drama set in the 1950s featuring physical torture. The DVD includes two audio commentaries, interviews with the cast and crew, and a "making of" feature.
Ryan Stewart had many things to say about The Hottest State, none of them good, so you may want to check out his review before renting this drama featuring Laura Linney and directed by Ethan Hawke. The DVD includes a commentary with Hawke and the crew and a short film by Hawke. The latest version of Lady Chatterley generated highly enthusiastic early reviews, which did not impress Nick Schager, who said the film "shouldn't be associated with the term 'cinematic' in almost any way, shape or form." The DVD includes trailers and a photo gallery.
Fantastic Fest Review: Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door
Filed under: Horror », Thrillers », Theatrical Reviews », Fantastic Fest », Cinematical Indie »
I finally had my annual nightmare-inducing film from Fantastic Fest this year after seeing Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. It's not a horror film in the traditional sense, but rather an odd combination of family drama and scenes of physical torture -- like a Lifetime movie directed by Eli Roth. The movie is adapted from the 1989 Ketchum novel, which was based on the real-life story of Sylvia Likens. Likens' story was also told in An American Crime, which premiered at Sundance this year.
The Girl Next Door is set in "innocent" 1950s small-town America, structured as a long flashback of David, a guy currently in his fifties. When young David (Daniel Manche) was on the verge of adolescence, two girl cousins moved in with the Chandlers next door, a family of several boys and their divorced mom Ruth (Blanche Baker). The girls lost their parents in a car accident, and the younger one, Susan, wears leg braces and uses crutches. Ruth was always considered a "cool" mom because she let the boys drink beer and talked about sexual matters. Now she starts bullying her nieces in a minor way, slowly advancing to higher and nastier levels of abuse especially targeted at teenager Meg (Blythe Auffarth).
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