Films don’t come much tougher to watch than Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, but the story of a girl murdered at the age of 14 and her struggle to come to terms with what has happened to her is certainly thought-provoking.

Based on the bestselling book of the same name by Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones stars Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon, a girl brutally murdered on her way home from school by a neighbour who is never caught.

She tells her story from the ‘in between’ – the place in between the earthly world and Heaven – where she must learn to accept what has happened to her and adjust to a new life in a different place, away from the people and places she knew and loved.

It’s a world of psychedelic seascapes, mountains, forests and fields, the world of her imagination. She’s not supposed to remain in the in between but what keeps Susie from moving on to Heaven is knowing that her murder is tearing her family apart and that the man who killed her still roams free. Susie’s horror and grief turn to intense hatred towards her murderer, a feeling that is all the while consuming her father who has become obsessed with catching the killer.

Frustratingly, The Lovely Bones throws up more questions about the next life than it can ever answer - Heaven is always off yonder in the obscure distance and the possibility of God’s place in all of it is not really explored. And unlike the satisfying conclusion of the Lord of the Rings, where the forces of good resolutely win over the forces of evil, The Lovely Bones is a bitterer pill to swallow, laying bare the harsh reality that bad people are not always brought to justice and that try and will as we might, sometimes all we can really do when something evil occurs is accept what has happened and hope that justice will be done eventually, whether in this life or the next.

There is something of a happy ending as Susie and her family make the transition from hatred and grief to acceptance and the buds of restored optimism, but any sense of hope at the film’s end is swallowed up by the inescapably disturbing nature of the subject matter and the uncomfortable light it sheds on the mind of a child murderer.

This emotional impact of this film is extremely powerful, but unlike the book, it is the darker emotions conveyed through the characters in the film that make the strongest impression. The aftertaste is one of grief because of the tragedy that befell Susie Salmon and while there is a sense of moving on, the film’s darker moments are just so haunting. What makes this film worth the journey is the hours and hours that could easily be spent discussing answers to the questions that linger long after the credits have finished rolling.

The Lovely Bones is out in cinemas on February 19.

On the web:
Official clips from the film have been made available to the Damaris Trust by Paramount Pictures. These are downloadable free of charge, along with discussion starters about the film, from www.damaris.org/lovelybones