Critics reviews

By taking Rynn’s plight seriously, director Nicolas Gessner imparts emotional honesty to a film that may otherwise appear a campy mid-’70s curio.

The overall scenario of the film, although far-fetched, is complex and rather ingenious, each piece of the puzzle neatly falling into place through exposition.

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane was one of five Foster vehicles released in '76, including Taxi Driver. No match for Scorsese's, Gessner's film may be for Foster completists only. But the intensity of her dead-eyed stare as the final credits scroll across her face reminds us of her preternatural ability, as a kid and beyond, to transform even the most negligible movie or scene into an event.

The narrative ingredients suggest melodramatic blood and thunder (there's even a rattling horror-film trap door) but Foster makes it all seem bizarrely plausible.