An American Crime (2007) poster
2007 · crime · drama · horror

An American Crime

Directed by Tommy O'Haver1h 37m2007
ElsewhereIMDb7.240kRT40%
  • heavy
  • extreme
  • bleak
  • cold
Movie DNA

Heavy, steady, extreme crime / drama, grounded in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

The true story of suburban housewife Gertrude Baniszewski, who kept a teenage girl locked in the basement of her Indiana home during the 1960s.

Our read · An American Crime (2007) reads as a heavy, steady, grounded crime · drama · horror entry — extreme in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of An American Crime

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You need to confront how ordinary cruelty enabled one infamous true-crime nightmare.

ends devastatingit will wreck youbuilds to a gut-punch finalegrips by minute 10attention 5/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upchild perilsexual violencegraphic violencecringe humiliation

Skip it tonightSkip if torture, child abuse, and true-story horror will leave you wrecked.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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