Educational Media Reviews Online

Now Return Us to Normal, winner of the Audience and Best Documentary Awards, follows the teenage experiences of the filmmaker and main character Leslie Koren as she reflects on her time in a behavior modification school, Oakley School. Koren attended the Oakley School approximately 12 years prior to production and currently suffers from complex PTSD and a variety of other mental illnesses. Audiences see how greatly Koren struggled to create the film which included a significant hiatus in production.

Koren’s parents originally claimed fear in regard to their daughter’s behavior and this fear served as the impetus for her forcible enrollment in Oakley. The filmmaker however, remarks that her behavior was a reflection of the turmoil caused by her parents impending divorce, normal teenage hormonal outbursts and struggles with depression and anxiety.

The film reveals that Oakley and schools like it are touted as behavior modification camps with the goal being to ‘break you in order to fix you.’ They were derived from a perverted and outdated offshoot of popular addiction treatment programs. Teens were often subjected to verbal, physical and at times psychological abuse. Previous participants are now suffering with PTSD, anxiety, depression and in more extreme instances, suicide. Koren contends that students were admitted with many of these illnesses that were then exacerbated by their time at Oakley.

Instructors, staff and administrators remark on a completely different experience. Many, including the previous Dean of Students, could see the value in their program and the demands that they expected of their students. Koren concluded that there was not one single person to demonize at Oakley. She states that there are multiple, at times conflicting, perspectives.

Overall, Now Return Us to Normal would be appropriate for higher level social sciences courses, especially those relating to child psychology, sociology and behavior modification. There were some slight lapses in energy and pacing, but this is to be expected with the sensitive nature of the relationship between Koren and the subject matter she was filming. The film was perceptive, poignant, and would be a welcome addition to college level curriculum.

Awards:
Nevada City Film Festival, Audience Award; Alternative Film Festival, Best Documentary

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