- Critical Dissonance: Critical reception for the film was mixed, with praise made towards the uneasy tone and acting performances but faced accusations of exploiting the real-life tragedy. Audience reception, meanwhile, leaned more to the positive side.
- Moral Event Horizon: Gertrude does all of this, starting with hitting Sylvia with a belt and then goes worse and worse from there. The most disgusting part is the fact she refuses to take responsibility for what she did and instead blames her children for everything.
- Paranoia Fuel:
- Children and teenagers: Your foster parents want to torture you to death. If you try to tell, no one will believe you, not even the police. And even the kids you thought were your friends will turn on you as soon as they see you're helpless.
- Parents: Don't trust anyone to take care of your children, unless you want them to suffer undeserved, cruel, and dragged out deaths.
- Retroactive Recognition: Carole from Glee (Romy Rosemont) as Sylvia's mother, Evan Peters as Ricky.
- The Woobie:
- Sylvia. She was an innocent child who had her life cut short at 16, and she was killed very slowly and painfully.
- Jenny. Imagine being forced to watch your older sibling being tortured to death and you can't do anything about it because you know that if you try, you'll get the same treatment. In real life, she suffered trauma well into adulthood, still terrified of Gertrude.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/AnAmericanCrime
FollowingYMMV / An American Crime
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