Alternate Character Interpretation: In a way with Ruth's sexuality. As she appears attracted to women but as Susie described her watching her cousin undress it doesn't seem sexual. But her obsession with Susie reads like a Stalker with a Crush. Her relations with Ray further complicate things as she kisses him to experiment and in one point gets alarmed she might have felt something. In one of these scenes she even tells him, he can pretend she is Susie and there is also another scene having her climbing in bed with Lindsey in a platonic way. And lastly, Susie uses her body to have sex with Ray. At that point a lot of people give up trying to classify Ruth at all.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: For kids in more rural or suburban areas with some open areas, the idea that kids regularly cut through a cornfield on their walks to and from school isn't an unusual choice. To urban readers who have no experience dealing with it, this comes off as a ridiculous thing to do.
Angst? What Angst?: Lindsey in a complicated sense. It's not that she doesn't grieve for Susie at all—tears are shed, and her grief fuels her drive to prove Harvey as Susie's killer—but compared to the rest of her family, it seems that she's trying to pull herself together faster. Or at least, she's trying to avoid getting the identity of "the murdered girl's sister".
Cry for the Devil: Susie flashes back into Harvey's past to provide some moments from his childhood that can qualify. Like how his father ordered his mother out of the car on a highway and drove off. Harvey never saw his mother again.
Harsher in Hindsight: The plot point that Mr Harvey gets away with raping and murdering Susie (as well as many other girls and women) for years and is ultimately never brought to justice legally (though Susie does witness his accidental death), and the fact that Alice Sebold partly based the novel on her own experience as a rape survivor, gets downright depressing after 2021, when the man convicted of raping Sebold was finally exonerated via DNA, meaning the real rapist was never caught as far as we know. It also makes a minor plot point where some innocent people were wrongly suspected of killing Susie harsher as well, considering a real person suffered a miscarriage of justice.
Signature Scene: The way everyone talks about the book, you'd think it was just pages of Susie's rape at the hands of Mr Harvey. It's not that long, but the detail ensures everyone remembers it. Alice Sebold reportedly disagreed with the film choosing to leave it out.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The story's inciting incident is a fourteen-year-old girl being raped and murdered. The rape is detailed in graphic fashion - sadly taken from the author's own experience. And the murder is also detailed as Susie being chopped into pieces (and her dog later finds her elbow). This destroys her family; her father becomes a vigilante who is obsessed with finding the killer, her mother ends up having an affair and leaving them for eight years, and Susie herself remains as a character to angst about what she won't miss out on. And there's the fact that her murderer is never brought to justice, dying anticlimactically years later. While the story is about moving past grief, sometimes the endless bleakness can feel pointless.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While one can feel sorry for Susie missing out on so much of life, possessing her friend's body to have sex with her Love Interest, thereby raping her friend by proxy, is rather hard to justify.
Film Examples
Angst? What Angst?: Even taking into account the time-span between Susie's murder and Grandma Lynn's arrival at the house, she seems remarkably blase about the fact her eldest grandchild had been murdered. Part of this is due to a book-to-film change - as Grandma Lynn doesn't visit until much later in the book and the time is vaguer in the film. But since she brings two bottles of scotch to the house and is always seen with a glass in her hand, she appears to have her own way of coping.
Stanley Tucci was the only one who got an Oscar nomination, despite most of the praise going to Saoirse Ronan. Even with the film's divisive reception, years later it's still considered one of her best performances.
Rose McIver meanwhile was completely ignored, despite turning in a spirited performance too.
Base-Breaking Character: Grandma Lynn has detractors who feel she provides unnecessary comic relief in a story where a teenage girl is murdered, not to mention the fact that we never see her mourning Susie. Others however find her funny, due to Susan Sarandon's Large Ham performance - and in any case she doesn't overshadow the main cast.
Broken Base: Big time with the portrayal of the In-Between. Some viewers (especially book fans) hate that the film was taken up by Gratuitous Special Effects, since Susie doesn't find the place as spectacular in the book. And some just felt the effects were cheesy. Others however feel it adds a lot of artistic flair to the film, and like the idea of at first showing the escapism before Susie moves on.
Catharsis Factor: After he murdered Susie and several others; tricked Jack into getting beaten into a coma; tried to kill Lindsey for breaking into his home and then escaped while both disposing of Susie's body and then trying to target yet another girl too, seeing Harvey fall to his death in the ravine because of something as insignificant as an icicle is nothing short of incredibly karmic and satisfying.
Complete Monster: The film version of George Harvey is an antisocial loner as well as a depraved Serial Killer, whose victims are female and preferably children. At the beginning, Harvey lures and murders Susie Salmon, after which he decided to continue kidnapping and killing until it becomes a habit. Harvey later tries to kill Susie's sister Lindsey after she obtains evidence proving his guilt. While watching from Heaven, Susie sees that over the years, Harvey murdered several other girls, including his landlady and a six-year-old. Moments before his death, Harvey attempts to lure another victim to her death.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Susie and Holly clearly have a lot of fun inside their heaven. Even when the movie shows that it's all shallow escapism, the scenes and special effects still look spectacular.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film did quite well in Ireland and has a good number of Irish fans — due to Saoirse Ronan as the lead.
Susie's behavior with her camera became this with the rise of the trend of selfies.
Susie also deadpans that her career is over when her mother refuses to let the film from her photos be developed at once. Nowadays Saoirse Ronan is one of the most acclaimed and accomplished actors of her generation.
Saoirse would also be on the other side of someone else using her body against her will in the film adaptation of The Host (2008).
Lindsey proving a successful Amateur Sleuth is amusing, considering Rose McIver filmed this before getting cast in Power Rangers RPM.
It's also said that Lindsey "always said she never believed in love". Rose McIver later stars in Once Upon a Time as Tinker Bell - who tries to get a Broken Bird to find her Second Love.
And Susie complaining about never getting to experience a first kiss is amusing in light of Saoirse Ronan's role in Brooklyn; where she ends up in a Love Triangle and is spoilt for choice between two good men.
Just Here for Godzilla: Although the story was trashed by critics, the performances of Stanley Tucci and Saoirse Ronan got unanimous praise.
Moe: Susie is just the cutest thing ever, especially with her Innocent Blue Eyes. It makes Mr. Harvey ten times more despicable for killing her.
Mr Harvey's appearance in the movie ticks every box of "serial killer" stereotypes, but it doesn't make Stanley Tucci's performance any less scary.
For some, Holly's delivery of "it's heaven!" might be corny, but still quite sweet.
Periphery Demographic: The film was intended for an adult audience, but ended up testing better with teenage girls. Generally speaking, it was better received with teenagers and young adults.
Salvaged Story: The film leaves out a controversial moment from the book where Susie uses Ruth's body to have sex with Ray before moving on, which as note above, is quite Squicky at best and a horrible violation at worst. In the film, it's changed to just a tame kiss, making the scene much sweeter.
The sequence that received the most complaints was where Susie's spirit finds Mr Harvey in his bath after murdering her, surrounded by dirt and her belongings.
Then there's the other victims of Harvey coming to greet Susie and welcome her to move on to Heaven with them.
Special Effect Failure: The make-up to have Lindsay appear younger in the early scenes. They give Rose McIver Girlish Pigtails and braces, but she's visibly older than Saoirse Ronan. Case in point - after Susie's death, Lindsay looks eighteen at the youngest.
A good amount of fans didn't like the changes to the movie's version of the in-between. It's mostly a ghost town in the book, but the movie changes it to a spectacular fantasy land bordering on Gratuitous Special Effects.
In movie adaptations from books that feature heavy character narration it is usual to see that be removed from the film. This movie actually decided to keep quite a bit of Susie's narration but a lot argue it weirdly chose to omit some of the books most heartwarming and gut punching lines that would have been the major reason for keeping the narration.
Making Grandma Lynn function as comic relief got a few complaints too. But not as much as others, due to Susan Sarandon proving funny for some.
The tone shift from the novel, making things Lighter and Softer. Roger Ebert in particular felt the film was unintentionally creepy as a result.
Character development was a big feature of the book allowing the reader to grow with these characters as time passes on, and the movie really cut out a lot for characters like Lindsey, Ray and Ruth. To say even less of how much Buckley and Samuel have most of their bigger moments in the book featured only passingly in the movie.
Abigail's affair with Detective Len is completely cut out of the film, which is a major crux of her character. As a result, it can feel as though the movie is building to something with her...and then she abruptly vanishes. Also rather wasting Rachel Weisz's talents.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Many critics agreed that Saoirse Ronan's performance was by far and away the best thing about the film, and it was credited with kick-starting Ronan's career in Hollywood despite the film's own lack of success.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Whether you like the elaborate fantasy world of the In-Between or not, you can't deny that the effects are quite spectacular.
What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Due to the bright colours and PG-13 rating, not to mention a teenage protagonist, a lot of people tuned in not expecting such a dark and upsetting story amidst all the CGI fantasy stuff. The choice to rate it as such received twenty-four complaints for the BBFC. The rating was kept however, because of the lack of Gorn, profanity or nudity.
