The Child in the Dark

[Intense content]

There is a child.  He – or she – lives in a basement, a cellar.  It is dark; there, light nor comfort ever enter.  Food is sometimes dropped in through the cellar door, scattering and crumbling, tumbling across the floor in all directions.  It is covered in mold and dust, now, and the messes the child has made.  The floor is an atrocity.  It is covered in rat carcasses, which the child has nibbled on in the long darkness between feedings.  The child is thin and dirty; his skin is red and bloated from abuse and a lack of care. Unbeknownst to all, someone comes down into the dark.  A great man in silence comes down into the cellar and beats the child.  The child feels the man's blows until his face is swollen and bloodied.  He is left alone down there, to bleed and whimper.  The child speaks no words; he cannot speak any words.  The only sounds he makes are the gasps and moans involuntary but necessary to the abuse he suffers.

Festering in the dark, he knows nothing else.  Dying, gasping, breathing, he knows not where he is or what he is or why.  He cannot even ask himself these questions.

The child is no longer a child.  But he still lives in the darkness.  He is not a person; his head and heart are empty.  He has never been anything, and he will never be anything.  No one has compassion on him; no one acknowledges his existence.  The great man doesn't come anymore; there is nothing in the child's darkness but squeaking and scuffling.  And one day, the squeaking and scuffling do not find resistance.  And the darkness never ends.

......

This is the kind of movie that I have had more than enough of.  This is entertainment?

~Meggy