I was flipping channels and – lucky me – I flipped to this movie right at the part where the whole family was getting raped by the gang of dirtbags and then the brother came through the door with the shotgun and started blasting. Was this gang just a random bunch of dirtbags, or did these guys live down the street or something?
Thinking about this scene makes my colon hurt.
IIRC, they were escaped convicts from a nearby prison.
Yeah, that scene was pretty graphic, especially since it involved little kids.
IIRC (read the book only once and that was a few years ago) the attackers were led by the character referred to as “Callanwolde” and he had terrorized them once before, when the family lived in Atlanta. They fought him off at that time (by lobbing jars containing black widow spiders at him), but years later he tracks them down in South Carolina and attacks them, quite horribly, again.
So it’s not a random attack, it’s revenge, or some sort of continuation of the previous assault.
I * think * that’s what transpires in the book. Again though, it was a while back, so excuse me if my memory is not 100% accurate.
In the book it was rape metaphor (IMHO):
The kids named Callanwolde after a (fictional) estate in Atlanta. Their father was off to war, and they lived next to the estate in a relative’s house. The kids stumbled upon a man, almost beast, in the woods of the estate. He chased them home, stalked their house for weeks trying to get to their mom and generally threatened their well-being. Finally, when the he tried to enter the house, the kids used their uncle’s tarantula collection to drive him off.
Later in the story, Callanwolde escapes from jail, and he and his former cellmates come to the family’s house on the coast with the intention of raping and killing the family. The father is out shrimping and the older brother is outside feeding the pet tiger (which is another story but not entirely preposterous.) In the end, the brother brings salvation in the form of a bengal tiger and all would be better except that the mother insists that to protect her honor, they can never tell anyone about it, not even their father. As far as anyone else will know, it never happened.
This series of events contributes (yes, there’s more) to the sister’s self-destructive tendencies and was a pivotal part of the book. Strangely, the entire focus of the book was shifted to Tom and Lowenstein when the movie was made, which made for a confusing story, IMHO.