Girl in the Basement: A harrowing look into the horrors of domestic abuse.

Then, like being woken from a bad dream, we are taken back 20 years earlier. The female, Sara, is youthful in comparison to the sullen-faced woman we just witnessed rush her daughter to the hospital. She is young and full of teenage attitude, wanting to go to a party. Her mother at first permits it, but her father, whom we instantly identify as an unnerving, domineering despot, forbids her to go. Sara rebels, and sneaks off to the party, where she dances carefree with her boyfriend, making plans for their future. When her parents discover she’s not in her room, her father mutters through clenched teeth, “She’s a problem.” The problem, we are to find out, is not Sara, but Don, her father.

Throughout the film, we are taken back to the halcyon moments of Sara’s brief escape from the clenches of suppressive patriarchy: her first love, her first experiences in the flush of youth, all of which we never expected to be denied, and never in the way that Sara is denied the first 20 years of her adulthood in such a torturous, inhumane and abusive way, at the hands of her father. The unforgivable acts committed upon Sara are the kind we expect from the psychologically disturbed—the insane, psychopathic strangers which we warn our daughters about; those strange men whom we are warned to never be left alone with, to never get in their car, to never accept a drink from. But we would never imagine the perpetrator could be lurking in our own home, let alone be the father of our children.

One fateful afternoon, after graduation, Sara’s mother goes out. Her father requests Sara’s help, so she cuts short a call to her boyfriend. This is the last of the outside world Sara will see for twenty years. As she helps her father into the basement with a heavy box, she passes a mug with the words “world’s greatest dad.” The irony is difficult to digest.

Day one concludes with Sara silently screaming in the sound-proofed basement, hidden from the family’s view by a bookcase. Each passing day is marked on the screen, and with each announcement, we are reminded that this will go on for 7,300 days in total. One cannot process the horror, desperation, vulnerability, pain, and loneliness Sara feels, let alone the physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father that forces her into motherhood—enduring labor by herself, alone, with no painkillers, and the resulting children she did not ask for by a man she did not consent to relations with. The unimaginable experience of this, combined with the psychological trauma of being imprisoned, abused, and raped, is not an experience that can be adequately expressed in words. It is also a story that demands an extremely gifted cast and crew to convey.

Directed by Elisabeth Rohm, and written by Manu Boyer, Leslie Greif, and Barbara Marshall, this incredibly challenging and distressing story is executed with gritty perfection. The cast more than delivers—the tension, misery, fear, and grueling agony of Sara is portrayed flawlessly and with terrifying accuracy by Stefanie Scott (Insidious: Chapter 3). Don, her father, is masterfully portrayed by Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club); we watch in disbelief as his Jekyll and Hyde personality flips seamlessly from a strict but respectable father into a brutal abuser and rapist. The roles of Sara and Don present major challenges for both actors; the inconceivable torture experienced by Sara, and a man capable of such sickening crimes. Scott’s performance is heartbreaking, and Nelson’s sends shivers down the spine; his portrayal of a dark character who committed such abominable acts, yet coolly managed to keep them so well hidden beneath the surface that no neighbor or family member could ever have suspected him of such horrors, is as unimaginable as to how Sara could have survived them.

Gripping, frightening, excruciating, and extremely difficult to watch, Girl in the Basement is an exemplary example in Lifetime’s Ripped from The Headlines series. Highly recommended—but not for the faint of heart.