A disturbing social thriller of torture and mind-blowing sadism that really shouldn’t have been made.

I’m somewhat appalled and disgusted by scenes in the movie especially those children and what they were portraying. The younger actors better had some serious psychiatric reviews after making this movie because it really could be life changing.

And that’s not the reason that this movie shouldn’t be made. While I appreciate that it did have a story to tell, but there’s a fine line between it being brilliant and it being gimmicky and exploitative. And unfortunately this felt like it belonged to the latter.

The movie felt a little self-indulgent and didn’t feel all that realistic sometimes, which contributed to being not genuine – and for a movie such as this, the genuineness is very important. So when the movie opened up with “Based on a true story”, I have to wonder how much of it is based on facts.

The woman conducting the torture, although gave a good performance, didn’t come off as real and believable enough. How could she trust the boy next door to keep all those secrets just by providing him free booze? Worse is, she then invited so many other kids to participate and trust them all to keep to themselves and not go reporting to their parents?

How stupid could she be and to be so wickedly brilliant at the same time? That just wasn’t realistic enough and became gimmicky for what this movie was trying to be.

And most of the kids in here didn’t have enough psychological depth in their acting, made worse when the boy next door kept coming back for more of the torture “pleasures”.

I’m not sure who’s to blame but I’m guessing it’s the screenplay guys. This should be one of those that worked better in books than on the silver screen. Though I did read somewhere the author was really proud of the movie.

Rating: 5 / 10

(all images from rottentomatoes.com)