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Showtime Ellen Page stars as torture victim Sylvia Likens in "An American Crime."

The lure of seeing Ellen Page in a new film so soon after her winning performance in "Juno" is terrific.

The additional pull of Bradley Whitford ("Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip") and Catherine Keener ("Into the Wild"), plus James Franco, who was adorable in "Freaks and Geeks," amazing in the title role in TV's "James Dean," reliably goblin-like in the "Spider-Man" franchise and who's drawing raves for this summer's "Pineapple Express," may be irresistible.

They all give admirable performances in the upcoming true-crime movie, "An American Crime," airing Saturday on Showtime.

But consider yourself forewarned: it's trauma time.

Submitting to this spectacle may trigger that old internal argument about the value of watching great performances in an otherwise grisly and relentlessly downbeat film. As you alternately admire and are repulsed by the screen images, you can't help debating whether it's better for your mental health to turn it off or, for art's sake, to keep going.

Crafted from documentation of horrific events, the film leaves audiences to intuit a moral, and providing only sketchy character studies.

Director and co-writer Tommy O'Haver has been obsessed with this story since he was a teenager growing up in Indianapolis, when it became the worst crime in Indiana history. He has tried to explore the resident evil in human souls that could make such a crime possible.

If only he had been able to ferret out enough information about the chief villain to offer more details.

Based on transcripts from a 1966 trial, the story chronicles the abuse, torture and subsequent mysterious murder of a teenager, Sylvia Likens, in a grisly crime with abundant observers and witnesses, none of whom acted to halt the violence.

Boarder becomes target

Likens was sent to board with Gertrude Baniszewski while her parents took off with the carnival.

Keener has the juiciest role as Baniszewski, the destitute single mother of seven, a woman hooked on cough syrup, who housed Sylvia and her sister in order to make extra money.

In a startling turn not explained in the film, and a mystery to the court, Gertie begins to torture Sylvia almost immediately, telling the other kids that she must be punished for lying, that she is promiscuous and "dirty."

Like the obedient torturers in Stanley Milgram's classic social psychology studies, the kids do as they're told.

Sylvia is humiliated and degraded in the course of her stay at Gertie's house. Once she's relegated to the basement, there's no limit to the dehumanization process.

Surrogate torturers

Given instructions to inflict pain, the other children take part, at first reluctantly, then warming to the task. Obedience to authority trumps any qualms they might have.

Even worse than in Milgram's experiment, these kids administered the physical punishment themselves, not through an intermediary.

Adding to viewers' discomfort, the diminutive Page is even younger and more vulnerable-looking in the "American Crime" role. The film is haunting, particularly at this moment in history. The title's suggestion that this is a particularly American crime, raising the specter of torture and current political policy, seeps through in an unfocused way.

But emptiness at the center of the story overshadows both that topical reference and the cringe-inducing performances.

A better display of Page's talents in the torture department is the equally bizarre 2005 film "Hard Candy." At least that quirky film achieved meaning beyond its incredible darkness.