Film

An American Crime

Name: An American Crime
Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror
Released: 2007
Cast: Catherine Keener, Elliot Page, James Franco, Bradley Whitford, Ari Graynor

Crime
Biopic
Very dark

An American Crime is a meticulous, unflinching account of a real 1965 case in which a suburban Indiana woman systematically tortured a teenage girl held captive in her basement. Catherine Keener delivers a chilling performance as the perpetrator. This is cinema of moral witnessing—difficult, necessary, and profoundly sad.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you can sit through a bleak, unflinching true-crime drama where the horror comes from ordinary people's cruelty and small-town complicity, and where Catherine Keener's performance carries the weight.

Skip it if you need some relief from relentless cruelty, since the film stays in its grim subject for almost its whole runtime and offers little lightness to balance the suffering it depicts.

What it asks of you: It runs under ninety minutes and never lets up, so it asks you to stay steady and watch closely while staying with something brutal and deeply uncomfortable.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Heavenly Creatures1994

Peter Jackson's true-crime masterpiece about teenage girls and escalating psychological obsession. Visually inventive where An American Crime is austere, but equally committed to understanding how ordinary people spiral into monstrosity.

But The style occasionally feels at odds with the violence. It's a young filmmaker's film, and some moments read as baroque rather than earned.

The Act of Killing2012

A precise, controlled dissection of Munchausen syndrome by proxy and maternal cruelty. Like An American Crime, it refuses to sensationalize abuse; instead it builds dread through accumulation of small, toxic moments.

But It's a Lifetime movie, which some viewers dismiss out of hand. The restraint will feel slow if you want catharsis or spectacle.

Capturing the Friedmans2003

An extraordinary documentary about a family accused of child abuse. It examines how we construct narratives around guilt and innocence, and how easily we misread intent. Morally complex in ways that feel urgent and unsettling.

But It's deliberately ambiguous. You cannot leave it with clean answers, which is precisely the point—and precisely what some viewers find maddening.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from An American Crime

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Oleanna1994

Both films are about what happens in enclosed spaces when one person holds power over another. Both are glacially precise about the mechanics of psychological domination. Both refuse to offer moral comfort.

David Mamet's play, filmed tersely: a professor and student in a single room, accusations mounting, language becoming a weapon. The entire dynamic inverts halfway through. It's about power, bad faith, and how quickly words become mutilation.

But It's two people in an office for 90 minutes. There is no plot. Mamet's dialogue is percussive and masculine in a way that grates on some ears.

Room2015

A mother and child held captive, shot from inside the prison itself. Where An American Crime is about the captor's psychology, Room explores survival and love in hell. Brie Larson is extraordinary.

But The relentless claustrophobia exhausts some viewers. The second half shifts register, which works thematically but feels tonal to some.

Christine2016

Antonio Campos' portrait of a real suicide by a news anchor in 1974. It's quiet, precise, and devastating—interested in the texture of despair rather than its melodrama. Rebecca Hall is magnificent.

But Nothing happens. It's about the emotional architecture of depression, which means the pace mirrors numbness. Easy to find boring if you want plot.

A Little Life2023

A limited series about trauma, survival, and the impossible weight of friendship. Structured to peer unflinchingly at damage and recovery. Each episode builds on the last with surgical precision.

But It's relentlessly bleak and complex. Multiple timelines and perspectives demand attention. This is not television you can half-watch.

Spotlight2015

The Boston Globe investigation into Catholic abuse. It's about systems, not spectacle—how institutions protect themselves and how journalism matters. Ensemble cast, zero grandstanding.

But It's a procedural. If you want emotional catharsis, it won't deliver it; if you want righteousness, the film is too careful for that.

We Need to Talk About Kevin2011

Lynne Ramsay's portrait of maternal guilt and a mother's terrible knowledge of her child. Formally experimental, morally serious. It asks questions rather than providing answers.

But Actively difficult to watch. The form and pacing are intentionally destabilizing. Some find the ambiguity about culpability infuriating rather than enlightening.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu2005

Both films are about systems of cruelty and the ordinary indifference that permits atrocity. Both suggest that evil is often not spectacular—it's the quiet failure to intervene, the look away.

A Romanian film following an elderly man's night in an emergency room. It's documentary-style, almost unbearably slow, and about human indifference. No one helps him. The system fails him. It is one of the most devastating films ever made.

But It's three hours. It's bleak without reprieve. Watching a person suffer bureaucratic neglect in real time is the opposite of entertainment. Some find it a provocation rather than a story.

Sans Soleil1983

An American Crime is about bearing witness to atrocity. Sans Soleil is about how witnessing changes you, and how some images refuse to leave. Both ask what it means to carry the weight of terrible knowledge.

Chris Marker's essayistic documentary about memory, travel, and haunting. It's told through voiceover and images that don't always match—a meditation on what we carry and cannot forget. Unlike anything else cinema has made.

But It's experimental and resists narrative. You cannot summarize it. Some viewers find it profound; others find it pretentious and impenetrable.