1958. A quiet small town. Sensitive fifteen year old Meg Loughlin (a disarmingly sweet performance by Blythe Auffarth) and her crippled younger sister Susan (the excellent Madeline Taylor) are two orphaned girls who are taken care of by their stern and unhinged Aunt Ruth Chandler (superbly played with formidable steely grit by Blanche Baker) following the death of both their parents in a car accident. When Meg stands up to Ruth's harsh treatment of both herself and Susan, Ruth has her tied up in the basement and encourages a handful of local kids who include her own three sons and nice guy David Moran (a likable performance by Daniel Manche) to inflect all sorts of vicious abuse and torture on poor Meg. Director Gregory M. Wilson, working from an unsparingly grim and hard-hitting script by Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman, offers a powerfully unsettling and provocative meditation on the destruction of innocence, the depraved wickedness lurking just underneath suburbia's well-manicured surface, the casual sadism of adolescence, and the horrors of strict discipline and rigid morality gone dangerously around the bend. Moreover, Wilson shows admirable restraint and suggests more than shows the various atrocities committed in the picture. It's this latter element of commendable tact and taste which gives this movie its extra unnerving edge. The uniformly terrific acting rates as another major asset: Baker delivers a positively chilling portrayal of serene evil as Ruth, Auffarth is both brave and heart-breaking as the unfortunate Meg, Moran likewise impresses as David, plus there are sound supporting contributions from Graham Patrick Martin as the mean Willie Chandler Jr., Catherine Mary Stewart as David's cheery mom, Grant Shaw as David's easygoing dad, and William Atherton as the regretful grown-up David. William M. Miller's fluid, sparkling cinematography, Ryan Shore's delicately melodic score, the nonexploitative and matter-of-fact handling of the unpleasant subject matter, and the frightening plausibility of the whole story further enhance the considerable jolting impact and potency of this profoundly disturbing and gut-wrenching descent into the cinematic abyss.