Hell Camp: Le cauchemar des colos de redressement

I think the piece grants more screen time than required to cover the muddled opinions of Steve Cartisano's family (who sound so full of themselves) and much less on the victims and the tragedies they faced. That could either be an error in judgment on the filmmaker's part or, most likely, a Netflix decision to try to soften the emotional blow until the closing moments. Institutionalized abuse and the resulting trauma are discussed in all their somber detail, in what feels like American parents trying to run behind quick fixes for habitual (and often psychological) issues of their teenagers.

While I'm not surprised that wilderness therapy camps continue to exist in the States, given there are people who willingly sign up for haunted experiences and get tormented (oh, watch that documentary too if you must), what bothers me is how some folks still believe in the ideology of putting teenagers through clearly abusive methods to "teach them a lesson" and "turn them into good people". And if you're you're gonna say "Stuff like this would never happen in 2023", then I guess you're the one living under a rock. Worse things happens today.

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.

Started as something good, then turned into something gross. The ex and the daughter are in disgusting denial. They enjoyed the luxury lifestyle this produced. The lack of empathy from the family and "horse" dude is gross. No one was held accountable. These kids, now adults, will never be the same. His own kids were a mess! That's says something... this guy may have had good intentions at first, but greed and selfishness took over and he was a POS. The ex and kid need to wake up and see how absolutely stupid they look and sound. Take responsibility for your part in it all. Especially the wife. Her plastic surgery shows she's benefited from it all. SMH.

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.

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.