Sometimes a more dramatic effect can be achieved by implying meaning instead of being straightforward about it. Clint Eastwood does this in the beginning of his film "Mystic River", when Dave is kidnapped by two men and taken to a hideout in the woods. The audience sees Dave in a cell, saying to a man "No more. Please, no more.". From this it is clear that something traumatic has happened to Dave, but we don't know the extent of what truly happened. We don't know if he had just been beaten, or if he had been raped by multiple men. This adds to plot of the story because we don't know how traumatized Dave is as an adult by what happened to him as a kid. If he had been raped by many men as a kid, he is probably still mentally unstable, and it is likely he may have flipped for no reason and killed his old friend's daughter. The severity of the action taken on Dave leaves the audience wondering later in the movie if Dave could've really killed Katie.
Although leaving the images of crimes done to Dave as a child are left up to the audience's imagination allows the crime to be as dreadful as they want it to be, it also has negative effects. Dave's kidnapping is much less agonizing, seeing him just sitting in a corner, rather than seeing him actually being beaten and raped. The audience doesn't physically see Dave being raped, but the human imagination is strong enough to visualize all of the things that could've happened to him.
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