Disturbing Behavior? It's not just a movie!

I just got through watching Disturbing Behavior, which is offered as a free download through my cable company. This movie totally bypassed me when it was released in 1998.

It concerns a community where the parents have fallen under the spell of a youth psychologist who promises treatment for troubled teens. Basically, we have The Stepford Wives for high school.

What makes this movie especially disturbing, many years after it's release, is the fact that, in real life, many parents have fallen under the spell of religious leaders who essentially promise what the doctor, in this movie, offers on screen.

Troubled by your kids choice in music? Concerned about the friends they are hanging out with? Afraid they may not be the 'chip off the old block' you always envisioned?

Send them to a Christian camp where their entire behavior will be controlled by a competent staff who will feed them scripture, and corporal punishment, until they either give in or discover even newer reasons to hate Christianity and what we pass off as the 'typical American family'.

Disturbing Behavior does not offer a camp, just a simple operation.

The thing is, this operation cuts off the sex impulse, but whenever the kids get turned on, the sexual impulse turns violent. They become abusive monsters, just like in real life.

Are we sure this is fiction? That seems to be the norm in most fundamentalist Christian camps. Especially those that attempt to turn gay teens straight. Or skeptical teens into followers of the Christian herd.

Sexual thoughts are replaced with biblical stories of war, beatings for breaking the most minor of rules, and the ever present threat of hellfire.

If Disturbing Behavior changed the pseudo science into religion, you'd have a real life version of what many have already experienced in this country.

Doubt me?

Check out the following links:

Hephzibah House.
The Truth about New Horizon's ministry.
International Survivors Action Committee.

One of the more disturbing scenes in the movie is when the main character learns that his parents enrolled him in the program to make him a robot.

There is probably nothing worse than learning that your parents have stopped listening to you.

The already fragile bond between parent and child can easily be killed by the disturbing behavior of parents tuning their kids out but giving an all too willing ear to the latest fundamentalist quack.