Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.
An American Crime is elevated chiefly by its performances — Ellen Page and Catherine Keener deliver devastating, deeply committed work that anchors an almost unbearably harrowing true-crime story. The plot is structurally competent but leans heavily on the real events for its power rather than any particular narrative ingenuity, and the courtroom-framing device is functional rather than inspired. Cinematography is serviceable and period-appropriate without being visually distinctive. The subject matter — the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens — is singular in its horror, but the film's treatment is relatively straightforward for the genre; it doesn't reinvent true-crime drama. The ending, grounded in the real verdict, carries emotional weight but lands with the muted inevitability of historical record rather than dramatic catharsis.