Campamento infernal: Pesadilla adolescente

This documentary tells the story of the youth therapy programs that were founded by the now late Steve Cartisano. Really it doesn't take a genius to figure out these things will end up most of the time very badly, you're mixing rebellious teens with the wilderness, with figures of authority that rely on corporal punishment and abuse their power and you've got a recipe for disaster.

The doc was okay but I felt it could've had more of an impact, I would've maybe done less screen time from Steve's family, since they weren't in the camps and what I believe the viewer is looking for was more first person accounts of what happened. I think we could've seen more stories that never made it to the screen. And the ones that did I felt were very rushed. They should've made this into a mini series and divided the stories so that we could've gotten more information and details with that format.

Maybe Steve had good intentions at the beginning but like a famous quote says "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and these kids marched down that road far too many times before anybody put a stop to it.

Parents that had no idea of how to deal with their children, decide it's a good idea to send them out to the middle of the desert, in extreme temperatures, run by a man named Steve Cartisano. This is not a movie, people, I kid you not, this is a true story.

I've said it before, and I'll say again, as a Brit, I find some of the thought processes over in The States, Alien, who on Earth with half a brain cell would think this was a good idea, let's be honest, this happened in recent memory, not the 1800's.

I honestly couldn't believe what I was watching, that said it's a very well made and interesting documentary, although you may find it hard to understand the actions of many people.

Whilst the theory of teaching young people discipline, isn't exactly outrageous, what did they honestly think was going to happen under the circumstances, no law enforcement......there's the red flag right there.

'A gift working with kids,' well clearly not, these occurrences happened on his watch.

That mother?????? I have no words, that poor girl.

Why do people have kids if they don't know how to parent them.

8/10.

I get showing the full perspective and including every voice, but maybe 3/4ths of the people interviewed in this documentary defend the camps and Steve Cartisano's actions instead of talking about what went on and interviewing more victims. It's honestly disheartening,- the ex-wife, daughter, and ex-camp counselor don't show much (or any) empathy. When they talk about how a teen died at the camp, the wife mentions how upset it made Steve and then starts complaining about the court-case, and the daughter complains about the news coverage while coming across as very arrogant.

It felt like a lot of this was intended to diminish the degree of the abuse that went on and excuse or justify what Cartisano did. It did well when telling the stories of the survivors, but unfortunately falls short otherwise.

It's clear the director just wanted to simply get the story out, which can be perfectly adequate, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

They had the opportunity to ask some difficult and challenging questions to the aggressors and defendants of this story, but they didn't. They even use a clip from another interview where someone does ask those questions, which stuck out to me.

Without spoilers, Steve Cartisano, starts this abusive camp for kids and his entire family defend him vehemently, and not once were they asked any challenging questions. Maybe the director didn't want to scare them off, but you need to do these things if you want to make something that truly sticks out. But instead they took the easy route. They don't even mention the Mormon half of the story which you'll only learn about if you research this more after you watch the documentary.

The average score for this documentary is 6/10. The story itself is very interesting and it's doing all the work. I still recommend this though since it's an interesting story, but anyone could have directed this.

Not to mention it's SO DARK! Even day shots are dark! What is wrong with cinematographers these days?

A deluded unpleasant person called Steve Cartisano who is basically a fraudster and criminal with no proper qualifications or training runs a Wilderness Camp for teens who need proper help. Instead of giving the children help and guidance his camps are awful places which generally abuses the children at the same time getting big fees from the parents who ought to know better.

Cartisano's family and associates are interviewed, and they came across as deluded and devious as he is.

Shocking how kids can be badly mistreated when it take so long for the authorities to try to take action,. We also learn that Cartisano also committed sexual abuse on at least one of the victims.

He had his own children who were addicts etc.

The producers ought to have been more severe on showing this was totally a criminal enterprise masquerading as doing good:

6/10.