It Happened Here

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Audience Member Very compelling film, effectively guides the viewer through each survivors' efforts and obstacles as they work to navigate legal resources, trauma, and college life. This would be a broad scope for even one subject, but it balances well among the storylines. For that reason, I don't fault the film for certain time-barred exclusions, though I do wish there were some focus on *why* the students turned to college authorities in the first place, especially given the common criticism that victims "should" report all forms of misconduct to police instead of the college. There are tons of reasons to challenge this idea (eg, some accredited campus police have jurisdiction, schools are required to comply with investigations, campus resources are more readily available), and it's worth framing why these girls initially reported how they did, before getting into what the school reps vowed to do and how the schools then violated these students' rights. It Happened Here does a better job of demonstrating the enduring impact and inescapability of sexual violence than The Hunting Ground. Both films are definitely worth watching, but The Hunting Ground is comparably more political whereas It Happened Here is more personal. Highly recommend. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Audience Member It Happened Here is a documentary about the rape culture of college campuses. It features the stories of a number of young women who were sexually assaulted during their college careers, how it affected their lives at the time and where they have come from it. It also shows how colleges are affected by the accusations that their campuses do not feel safe and what campuses are doing to prevent future assaults from happening. Things I Like: The Tone. This movie hits you. It opens this subject up and hits you with how much of a problem rape on college campuses is. The documentary knows how to just dig into you and make you feel like you were personally affected by these tragedies even though you weren't and you want to do something about it because it is a large problem for many women on college campuses. The Content. The documentary does a nice job of telling you what happened to these women and then moves to show how it has changed them and how it has altered their lives and how they are overcoming this traumatic moment in their lives. It does a nice job of balancing and sort of mirroring the experience by not keeping you bogged down in the incidents themselves but shows what happens afterward and why that is sometimes the much harder part. Things I Didn't Like: The Similar Stories. The film gets monotonous because the stories are too similar in a lot of ways. I wanted to see a wider impact and I understand the subjects are chosen to convey a specific message but it would have been interesting to see a much more diverse set of stories because it seemed, from a lot of the stories they told us, that this affects a series of college students and they take a path that is almost prewritten afterward and don't move on and reclaim other parts of their lives. Overall: Overall the documentary is really powerful. It tells stories of the victims in a way that really hits you and makes you want to stop college campus rape before it starts. But I just wanted more diversity in the victims, and maybe their weren't that many, or maybe their stories weren't all that interesting, or maybe they didn't want to talk. But the documentary tells, what seems like at times, to be 5 versions of the same story. So it succeeds on conveying it's content and message but could have had more to keep our attention. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member 9/18/15 Netflix This was The Hunting Ground lite. Same theme, some of the same personalities but not nearly as well done or in depth as The Hunting Ground. If you want to see one movie about the serious problem of campus sexual assault watch The Hunting Ground instead. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Read all reviews

It Happened Here

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