“The Wilderness” Exposes the Troubled Teen Industry
The Troubled Teen Industry covers a wide variety of organizations that claim to exist to help families with young people who are struggling. Boot camps, group homes, boarding and reform schools, wilderness therapy…the list goes on. In theory, these organizations should be beneficial. It’s no secret that the teenage years can be brutal, for a range of reasons, and sometimes parents don’t know how to handle their kids’ emotions. It would seem that having these resources available could change the path many angry, lost kids are on. In reality, this is a massive, billion-dollar industry that thrives on abusive practices. While some boot camps or schools may be beneficial and kind to the kids who find themselves there, many, like the one in Spencer King’s The Wilderness, use the tough love approach as a treatment that results in far more harm than good.
Dark Star Pictures
Ed (Hunter Doohan) is kidnapped in the middle of the night from his home. He’s taken to the middle of nowhere in the Utah desert, where he finds himself part of a Wilderness Therapy program. A group of boys are hunched over dry pieces of wood trying to make a fire as Ed is taken to James (Sam Jaeger), the leader of the program. The point of Wilderness Therapy, in James’ eyes, is to turn these boys into men by forcing them to hike miles every day and learn survival skills. In actuality, Ed’s new friend, Miles (Lamar Johnson), tells him that James wants to keep the teens until they turn eighteen to take as much of their parents’ money as possible. The program isn’t interested in rehabilitating kids. They are sources of income rather than boys who need support at a critical time in their lives.
The point of these programs, regardless of what James and real-life leaders will tell you, is to dehumanize the kids who are sent there. Upon arrival, Ed is forced to strip naked to prove he’s not bringing in contraband. On the drive to the campsite, he’s blindfolded and his hands are tied behind his back. These theatrics instill a sense of power in the leaders and helplessness in the kids. The boys are not learning any valuable skills, they’re being ground to a pulp so they don’t have the energy to rebel. It’s not lasting change, nor is it beneficial in the long term. When these kids go home or age out of the program, they might be angrier than when they came in because so many adults in their lives have failed them on the most basic level. The Wilderness takes an unequivocally anti-Troubled Teen Industry stance by showing reality that isn’t blown out of proportion for the sake of creating drama. There’s already enough turmoil and strife baked into the lives of young teenage boys whose parents have sent them away.
Dark Star Pictures
When the title card for The Wilderness appears on-screen, it’s in a beautiful cursive font over the imagery of a car driving through a canyon in Utah. The sky is the sort of blue that seems to only exist in the American West, while the dark layers of sediment that make up the canyon walls offer contrast in a way that feels like another planet. There’s so much beauty in the untouched deserts of the West, and it’s presented as a dichotomy to the boys’ experiences. This emptiness reflects their helplessness, the chasm they must cross to return to the real world they miss so deeply. Some of the boys talk of escape and the mountainous path they’ll take to some small town where they can make a new life. Because as “troubled” as these teens are, they’re kind to one another. When Ed asks why Miles helps him, even though Ed hasn’t spoken a word to him, Miles shrugs and says, “Someone’s got to.”
Two things can be true. These boys can be difficult and they can need help, but this is not the place that can help them. The Wilderness asks its viewers to look upon young people struggling and see that “therapy programs” like this are not the answer. They shouldn’t even be considered. People like to describe the wilderness as unforgiving, and it is, but so are a lot of humans. It’s easier to push people into a corner, into a descriptor that’s simple to identify. These boys are troubled. What if, instead of shipping them off to the desert in the middle of the night, we spoke to them? Met them where they are and spent time understanding why they’re acting the way they are. The Wilderness is an exercise in compassion in the face of harsh conditions, and what happens when kindness is missing.
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