Netflix’s The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping is occasionally as hard to watch as it is impossible to ignore. Directed by Katherine Kubler, a former “student” of the troubled-teen-repair institution, the limited documentary series uncovers the appalling conditions of the now-defunct and abandoned Ivy Ridge boarding academy located in the wilds of Oswegatchie, New York.
Kubler attended or was incarcerated in Ivy Ridge from March 2004 to June 2005. She entered at age 15, kidnapped abruptly against her will in the middle of the night on the grievous charge of sipping a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at a previous school. Facing an unbelieving father, Kubler feels the forcefully-abandoned experience she endured stole her teenage years, and continues to embezzle large deposits from her adult psyche. Her post-traumatic stress and persistent panic attacks are a constant reminder of damage that cannot be undone.
Except maybe through long-form journalism. Kubler self-effacingly calls herself an “amateur gumshoe,...
Kubler attended or was incarcerated in Ivy Ridge from March 2004 to June 2005. She entered at age 15, kidnapped abruptly against her will in the middle of the night on the grievous charge of sipping a Mike’s Hard Lemonade at a previous school. Facing an unbelieving father, Kubler feels the forcefully-abandoned experience she endured stole her teenage years, and continues to embezzle large deposits from her adult psyche. Her post-traumatic stress and persistent panic attacks are a constant reminder of damage that cannot be undone.
Except maybe through long-form journalism. Kubler self-effacingly calls herself an “amateur gumshoe,...
- 3/18/2024
- by Alec Bojalad
- Den of Geek
Forget murders, Netflix‘s latest hot doc is about schools. Only they’re not really schools, they are prisons, they make millions of dollars and destroy thousands of lives, and the bigwigs at the top of these horrific establishments keep getting away with it…
This is The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping which focuses on troubled teen programs set up at facilities claiming to offer help to young people through therapy and activities. In reality teens were often forcibly removed from their homes, not allowed to speak, look out of the window, smile at their classmates, and in fact had to get permission to even fart. They were ill fed, tortured, brainwashed and kept away from their families, often for years. And the families paid thousands of dollars for the service.
The Program is a wonderful documentary, in no small part because the filmmaker Katherine Kubler was a victim...
This is The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping which focuses on troubled teen programs set up at facilities claiming to offer help to young people through therapy and activities. In reality teens were often forcibly removed from their homes, not allowed to speak, look out of the window, smile at their classmates, and in fact had to get permission to even fart. They were ill fed, tortured, brainwashed and kept away from their families, often for years. And the families paid thousands of dollars for the service.
The Program is a wonderful documentary, in no small part because the filmmaker Katherine Kubler was a victim...
- 3/15/2024
- by Rosie Fletcher
- Den of Geek
In the years after filmmaker Katherine Kubler left the Academy at Ivy Ridge, she struggled to grapple with the trauma she endured there. Long accustomed to documenting her life on camera, she decided to make a film that would reify her experience. What she discovered was much bigger than the abuse enacted at Ivy Ridge. The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping is Kubler’s new docuseries that explores the unsettling and ever-evolving troubled teen industry, which continues to endanger children while promising parents that the so-called wayward youth of America can be “fixed.” The series is directed and narrated by Kubler, who, as a former student of The Academy at Ivy Ridge, also tells the story of her time at the school.
“For a long time, I wasn’t going to include my story because I just wanted to be a filmmaker and make it about this issue, not me,...
“For a long time, I wasn’t going to include my story because I just wanted to be a filmmaker and make it about this issue, not me,...
- 3/12/2024
- by Roxanne Fequiere
- Tudum - Netflix
While crime ran rampant at the Academy at Ivy Ridge in Netflix's The Program, not everybody involved was arrested for their crimes.
Netflix's newest investigative documentary, The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping, opened viewers' eyes to the horrors that took place at New York's Ivy Ridge, which included various forms of physical and psychological torture.
Detailed by survivor and investigation leader Katherine Kubler, she and other victims spent more than a decade exploring what happened at the facility, hoping to bring those responsible for their suffering to justice.
Read full article on The Direct.
Netflix's newest investigative documentary, The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping, opened viewers' eyes to the horrors that took place at New York's Ivy Ridge, which included various forms of physical and psychological torture.
Detailed by survivor and investigation leader Katherine Kubler, she and other victims spent more than a decade exploring what happened at the facility, hoping to bring those responsible for their suffering to justice.
Read full article on The Direct.
- 3/8/2024
- by Richard Nebens
- The Direct
Director Katherine Kubler has one goal in mind with Netflix's The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping: revenge.
Over the course of three episodes, Kubler and her friends recall the abuse they suffered at the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a facility for "troubled teens" in upstate New York. The program at Ivy Ridge was designed to break students down emotionally and physically, and it worked. Many of the docuseries's subjects struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, while dozens of their friends have died by suicide or overdosed in the years since leaving the facility.
Over the course of three episodes, Kubler and her friends recall the abuse they suffered at the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a facility for "troubled teens" in upstate New York. The program at Ivy Ridge was designed to break students down emotionally and physically, and it worked. Many of the docuseries's subjects struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, while dozens of their friends have died by suicide or overdosed in the years since leaving the facility.
- 3/5/2024
- by Claire Spellberg Lustig
- Primetimer
Katherine Kubler’s harrowing three-part documentary tells a suffocating survivor story that morphs into a terrifying takedown on America’s corrupt behavior modification boarding school business.
“They tried to murder children’s souls here.”
Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo plays a recurring role as a beacon of escapism in The Program, Netflix’s three-part true-crime documentary, as imprisoned teens struggle to experience any modicum of individuality in a prison-like rehab center. “All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope,” is a moving quote from Dumas’ novel and it’s hard to not transpose this intense message onto the tortured victims of Ivy Ridge Academy as they fight for survival.
The Program unpacks the global epidemic of behavior modification programs that masquerade as boarding schools where parents willingly send their children to these hard-knock rehab centers. This in itself is a refreshing change of pace...
“They tried to murder children’s souls here.”
Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo plays a recurring role as a beacon of escapism in The Program, Netflix’s three-part true-crime documentary, as imprisoned teens struggle to experience any modicum of individuality in a prison-like rehab center. “All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope,” is a moving quote from Dumas’ novel and it’s hard to not transpose this intense message onto the tortured victims of Ivy Ridge Academy as they fight for survival.
The Program unpacks the global epidemic of behavior modification programs that masquerade as boarding schools where parents willingly send their children to these hard-knock rehab centers. This in itself is a refreshing change of pace...
- 3/5/2024
- by Daniel Kurland
- bloody-disgusting.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.