It is the summer of 1958 and young David (Daniel Manoche) meets Meg Loughlin (Blythe Auffarth), the new girl next door in Gregory Wilson's Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. Meg's parents were killed in a car crash, and now Meg, and her sister Sharon (Madeline Taylor) are forced to live with Auntie Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker) and her sadistic children including Wille (Graham Patrick Martin) and Donny (Benjamin Ross Kaplan). It is a summer that haunts David in his adult life.
The film starts out as a coming of age story like Stand by Me or Stephen King's It. It develops in a different direction that is more unsettling. Meg is punished for every wrong thing and that builds until Meg is strung up to be tortured. It then becomes Saw and tries to make the audience blink.
The acting is varied. Daniel Manoche's is good early with scenes of budding love, but loses character as he is forced to watch Meg's degradation. Blythe Auffarth's Meg suffers the same problem. When she is friendly and normal she shines. Blanche Baker's Ruth is not given any range to move and stays her hard talking sadist running the circus. She also can't seem to hold her character to the end and speaks her lines listlessly.
Jack Ketchum's Girl Next Door is a disappointing film. It is painful to watch as the audience loses the characters and is forced to watch torture for most of the film. By the end one is ready to see the characters die just to end the monotony.