I watched The Girl in the Closet today, and I was not prepared for how emotional this movie was going to make me, I saw a snippet of it on twitter and decided to go watch the whole movie. This is one of those movies that just left me genuinely heartbroken for a child who didn't deserve any of what happened to her.
The film is about Cameron, a young girl whose life changes completely after her mother suffers a medical emergency. She is eventually taken in by her relative named Patricia and at first, you might think maybe this is where things are going to become better for this little girl. She has lost her mother due to a medical emergency, she's already dealing with something no child should have to deal with, so surely having family around her should give her some kind of comfort, unfortunately, no. Things become darker when Cameron discovers that there is a terrible secret hidden inside the house, she is being taken to as a foster.
The title alone tells you something is wrong, but knowing that a child is being kept hidden away while everybody around her continues living their normal life is one of the most painful parts of the movie. Cameron is basically robbed of her childhood. She's isolated, frightened and desperate for somebody to notice what is happening to her and what makes it worse is that children depend completely on adults to protect them. When the people who are supposed to protect you become the people you're afraid of, where exactly are you supposed to go?
Cameron's situation wasn't just scary, it was heartbreaking because you could see how badly she wanted somebody to believe her and make her feel safe only to end up with a woman whon she thought was going to make her safe, turned out to be a heartless monster. Made her and three other people to live in a basement treating them worse than animals. What even made it heartbreaking was that this is actually a true life story, this is not just a piece of fiction, it really happened. How can someone be so evil? And it also shed light on the broken foster system as the staff did not do a proper check on Patricia before handing her over to the foster, if they did they would’ve seen that Patricia had once upon a time killed someone earlier in her life and she deemed not fit to be a foster.
I kept thinking about how terrifying it must be for a child to feel completely invisible. Imagine crying for help and nobody comes. Even though she's terrified, there is still this little bit of strength inside her. She keeps trying to find a way out. She keeps looking for somebody who might help her. Sometimes the foster parent disciplines them by burning their hands on a stove or keeping them locked without sunshine and very little food to keep them weak and dependant on the little she gives them. Their were moments where I wished certain things had been explored a little more, especially as I read about the true story online but I get how it would have been too graphic for cinema. It also has that Lifetime movie feeling where you can sometimes guess where the story is heading before the characters get there but those things didn't take away from the emotional weight of the story for me.
The Girl in the Closet is not the kind of movie I would describe as an easy watch. It was disturbing for me but underneath all of that is a story about survival and courage . At the end of the movie, I just sat there for a while thinking about that little girl who had spent more than 5 years in captivity living in the most horrid conditions. I don’t want to spoil the movie stating the ending or what happened in the end, for those who haven’t watched it but the whole movie as I saw is still up on Youtube.
Rating: 58/100