Movie Review: An American Crime

I've decided to start my From A-Z horror marathon again on my Amazon Prime. The list happened to start with a bunch of movies I'd already seen so, I found the first one I hadn't and this gem popped up.

An American Crime - not to be confused with American Crime Story - has an all-star cast, but back when they were relatively unknown and it's great.

Sylvia and Jennie's parents are carnies. Their dad is played by Nick Searcy, who I absolutely adored on Justified. He decides that his wife and he would be able to move the carnival circuit easier without the kids. So when the girls meet some other girls on the church bus and they invited them to hang out at their house, their dad decides to take the opportunity to leave his daughters with these strangers. Gertrude, the mother of the church bus girls, is a struggling mother of six children.

When the checks don't start coming in, Gertrude whips the girls with a belt. It escalates when Paula, the eldest of Gertrude's kids, becomes pregnant from a tryst with a married guy. Sylvia, trying to save her from being beaten by the man, tells him of the pregnancy. Angered by this, Paula tells her mom that Sylvia spread rumors that she is a slut. This prompts Gertrude's rage and frustration to move solely to Sylvia. She decides that Sylvia should stay in the basement. In front of her children and her daughter's boyfriend, Gertrude has Sylvia insert an empty glass bottle into her vagina. What the actual hell??

All the neighborhood kids find out that they can go after school and abuse the girl in the basement. They burn her with cigarettes and hose her down, beat her. Paula has had enough and regrets everything. After she goes to the Reverend, he comes to talk to her mom. This sends Gertrude off the rails and she decides to brand "I am a prostitute and proud of it" into Sylvia's stomach.

Paula manages to sneak Sylvia out of the house and Ricky (Evan Peters) takes her all the way to her parents at the carnival. Reunited, they go back to the house to get Jennie. Sylvia walks into the house to find Stephanie (Scout Taylor-Compton) trying to revive a body. Sylvia's body.

While being branded, Sylvia has died.

In court, Gertrude said every one of her children was lying and that she'd had no knowledge of what was going on in her home.

I'm going to make another post about this movie, but I have to go to work now. :(