Gertrude Baniszewski was a chain-smoking asthmatic single-handedly raising her seven children in near poverty in Indiana, and she offered to take in the Likens girls in return for a regular sum of money. Sylvia Likens was the 16-year-old daughter of traveling carnival workers who along with her younger sister Jenny - a polio survivor - were sent to live with a guardian so their parents could travel more freely for work and earn better money. One was elevated, however, by a remarkably strong cast for what was a TV movie, led sensitively and poignantly by a then-up-and-coming Elliot Page. An American Crime and The Girl Next Door are two quite different takes on the case of Sylvia Likens, but both were united in their aim to seriously examine how such a terrible ordeal ended up happening in the first place. It just so happens that in 2007, two movies inspired by the same case were released, and both were minimal affairs, far from the glittering heights of Monsteror Zodiac. True crime in film has been around pretty much since the medium’s inception, and over the decades, innumerable cases have been given the big screen treatment. It seems a more recent phenomenon to question the morality of it all, and in an era when people are not only consuming true crime content more than ever but also giving more thought to what they consume, it is an interesting time to look inward and consider exactly why true crime is so fascinating. Today, it has a considerable fan base, with a steady stream of programs and documentaries, and YouTubers and podcasters making careers out of retelling tales of horrible crimes that once took place. True crime has always been perversely enticing.
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