We all remember being told, as children, never to trust a stranger; never to accept an offer of sweets from a man who tells you to get into the back of his car. But what happen to those who make this one fateful, life changing mistake? Gardens of the Night tackles this deeply emotive issue in an honest fashion – there is brutality and there is pain, but never once do you question the film’s motive. Although the victims may never recover, their lives still go on, and they must fight to survive in any way they can.

I found this film an unexpected delight to watch. The director, Damian Harris, introduced the film and described how he found inspiration within a recent Newsweek story that he turned on its head. The media tend to focus on the loss of the parents in kidnap situations, and forget that the child has a story too. He described the first half hour as ‘arduous’, something I didn’t feel at all, but he urged us to put up with it as we would find it ‘rewarding and worthwhile’. Well, he was half right. A film that could have severely overegged the pudding kept the characters believable and the story powerful.

The action centres on the kidnap of Leslie Whitehead (Ryan Simpkins), a cherubic blonde eight-year-old from Middle America. Alex (interestingly portrayed by comedy actor Tom Arnold), a man claiming to be an employee of Leslie’s father, puts her at ease and persuades her to get in his car when she leaves school, spinning her tales of problems with Daddy. Alex and his accomplice Frank (Kevin Zegers) drive Leslie to a barren house, destination unknown. As the days go by and no one comes to save her, Leslie is fooled into thinking that her parents don’t want her back. We later painfully discover that Alex gives Leslie a random payphone number to reach her father on, in place of her own.

At what becomes her new home, Leslie meets Donny (Jermaine Scooter Smith), a young illiterate black child whose mother ‘went crazy’ and gave him away. Leslie and Donny form an easy friendship, which is affectionately portrayed using the innocent beauty of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, as a fantasy world where the children regularly find escape. Leslie is ‘Mowgli’ and Donny ‘Wolf’, there to protect her inside their homemade tent-jungle. Unfortunately, Donny cannot protect her from the grown men in her new ‘family’ and Leslie is forced to engage in child prostitution and pornography whilst adjusting to the agonising fact that her parents seem unperturbed by her loss.

In one scene, Leslie is taken to the house of a judge who asks that she wear a pink ballerina’s leotard and tutu, his costume of choice. We do not see Leslie trussed up, the essence of candyfloss and untapped virginity, poisoned and putrefied by a dirty old man. What is shown on camera is conveyed with the power of silence. As Leslie is waiting for Alex to collect her, she sits in the lounge with the judge’s children, all girls, one of whom is wearing the very same pink outfit. The blank stare of recognition that passes between the two girls is one of the most poignant moments of the film. As an audience, we begin to compare Leslie’s situation to that of this unnamed child, placing each on a scale of suffering. At least Leslie can sleep at night knowing this man is not her father. Thank Heaven for small mercies.

As time passes, Leslie and Donny develop an uneasy acceptance of their captors. From Leslie’s perspective, it is less painful to consider her parents dead. The children are fed, watered and brainwashed to believe that, if Daddy was giving them a bath, he’d be touching them down there too. The bath is a brilliantly used prop. The site associated with purification, cleanliness, innocence and fun is transformed into an instrument of torture, in which Leslie tries to commit suicide later on in the film - the ultimate form of wiping the slate clean. The trigger for this act of self harm comes as Leslie realises her involvement in perpetuating the cycle of abuse in the life of another human being, just as Alex did to her.

Grown up Leslie (Gillian Jacobs), free from her captors but poor, addicted and broken, has only Donny (Evan Ross) to keep her going, They sleep on the beach and in a mattress kingdom ruled by junkies, held together by a unique love for one another. As the bin-fires burn out, Donny asks Leslie if she ever thinks about Frank and Alex. ‘No,’ she replies. ‘I do…’ Donny says, ‘because if it wasn’t for them, I never would have met you.’

But then Leslie is promised a new life by Cooper, a pimp (Shiloh Fernandez). Cooper persuades Leslie to befriend twelve year old Monica (Carlie Westerman) from a local shelter, and groom her for a future as a prostitute. Leslie complies and soon finds herself bathing the young woman and repeating the same bittersweet lies she was bludgeoned with as a child.

ALEX: Don’t cry Leslie, everything will be fine. I’m not hurting you; I’m just making you more beautiful. You’re a little caterpillar and I’m helping you become a butterfly.

Once working at Cooper’s brothel, as she repeats the same tawdry dirty talk that she drags out for every john, Leslie realises how tired and sickening the whole routine is.  She has become something far from beautiful. As her anaemic, skeletal frame melts into the tacky floral bedspread, Leslie is confronted with her childhood demons, knowing she cannot inflict the same torture upon another human being.

Racing back to the shelter with Monica in tow, Leslie is forced to face up to her past. John Malkovich tackles the role of Michael, the shelter manager, brilliantly. He is truly genuine and down to earth. A mighty feat when so many ‘counsellor’ types are either saccharine sweet or permanent clichés. Michael proves to Leslie that her parents are looking for her, showing her a milk carton advertising her as missing. Although a weeping Leslie has proof that her parents loved her all along, she doesn’t believe they will want her to come home. ‘I can’t go back. They wouldn’t want me now, I’ve done too much.’

Again, the media tend to focus on the feelings of the parents when they are reunited with a lost child. Any parent would be glad to have their child home safe, but sometimes the child is unable to function in a world they can no longer remember. When Leslie is reunited with her parents, she learns that, although they have missed her, their lives have moved on. They have two young children, whom they have told that Leslie went to Heaven. Upon meeting her young siblings, Leslie tells them that she was in fact living deep within a dark forest, scared and running from monsters. Sadly, Leslie has become immune to monsters in the real world. Her curse is that the intangible monsters in her own mind will never die.

Running away from the family she never knew, all she wants is to be reunited with Donny, who has long since up and left, allowing Leslie the freedom make a new life for herself. The ending proves that certain stories are too complicated for an easy resolution. The voice of the child Leslie narrates from their favourite story as we see Donny reach Florida.

‘This is our jungle and nobody can come into it. Come back, for I love you. This door is never shut to you.’
‘I will surely come back.’

As Leslie and Donny lived out their darkest nightmares, they found Heaven in each other. Now they must get by alone, knowing they will probably never feel that again.