Pseudomemories: Video: True Horror Flick Scarier than a Fantasy Horror Flick

Regression
by Ethan Hawke

This is a fabulous, thoughtful AND well done movie with great acting. The story is actually a composite of many actual stories with major features matching historically verifiable events of two cases in the state of Washington (mostly the Paul Ingram story but features of "Wenatchee Witchhunt" scandal 1994-1995 in it as well). It is a true horror flick. My guess is that it is too scary for most because it can happen at any time to any one (including even very good families). The central actors do a fabulous job. Ethan Hawke plays a passionate, rough, quick and dedicated detective weho seeks to imprison abusers of children. Emma Watson plays the downtrodden victim and accuser in an abusive family said to be involved in a satanic cult.

The real strength of this movie is how the depicted motivations of so many people who rally to treat fantasies as fact facilitating repeated untold injustices. The mass media are saturated with hyper-sexualized images in entertainment, in advertising along and often in sensationalized news reports of shocking stories that rivet watchers (and the ever shrinking number of readers) to make money. District Attorneys running for office need emotional laden cases that quickly persuade juries of guilt without the need for corroboration or physical evidence. Police officers are quick to restrain and jail all "threats" to women and children with a vengeance because of a natural inclination to protect ongoing victims (whether accusations are true or not). Police and social services supervisors can ask for ever bigger budgets and larger staffs in order to meet the needs of more "victims". Therapists using recovered memory therapy produce helpless clients who need ever more therapy. The same therapists can also generate contracts with police to "unlock" the hidden "memories" that provide police with more details by "uncovering repressed memories"(generating more professional income). Accusers often need someone who can be responsible for the tragic decisions they have made in their own lives and repressed memories provide someone to blame. Clergy need to assure church members that they will act compassionately to protect victims from satan using the resources available. In this movie the clergy provide a safe home for the accuser. All of these motivations have an interest in treating every accusation of incest and satanic abuse as true even if bizarre, unsupported by physical evidence and factually false. Finally for those who know little, except what they see on the news, what child (or minor) would make up something so horrid about there family if it were not true? The assumption of pure motivation by the accuser trumps the assumption of innocence of the accused. In the case of childhood sexual abuse (always manifested in the Satanic Ritual Abuse) the accused is not presumed innocent by any party!
Finally there is the conviction and jailing of innocent fathers, who were not perfect fathers, and often willingly accept plea bargains that allow their falsely accusing children to go free. In this movie the father facilitates a better and more comfortable life of his daughter in a church community that he admires. This movie clearly depicts the systematic and complicated confluence of motivations that bring about injustice.
This is not just entertainment because it is also a literary work. The main characters change as a result of the events depicted. The viewer will change too and come away with a deeper understanding of our culture and who we are. It may not be comfortable for many to think about the issues raised in the movie. Many people have been impacted by the "recovered memory movement" and the cultural myth of "repressed memories". Those in anyway connected to accusations arising from "repressed memories" should see this movie as soon as possible. The police commander (in the movie) summed it up when he stated the scariest part was not only that the crack lead detective believed the accusations, but that "we all believed the accusations."
The lone weakness of the movie that the accuser is depicted as consciously manipulating events and using suggestive techniques to foster the hysteria. In most events the accuser herself (overwhelming majority of accusers are female) is undergoing recovered memory therapy or regression therapy and actually believes the fantasies (often while on medication). The movie is, I think, trying to make a clear statement that the recollections and fantasies are not factual so that the point of the movie is more forcefully made. I keep the 5 star rating for what it does do so well.
This movie sheds light on a very dark era in our mental health industry. The movie is so well done that it is not classified as a "dramatized documentary" but as a horror/detective/thriller. The movie only lightly engages the contribution of psychotropic medications to the production of vivid fantasies but, alas, the movie already does so much.

Due to personal experience that struck our family I have read over a dozen books, many dozens of articles (academic research, legal reviews and popular writings) and viewed an extensive library of videos on "false memories" ("repressed memories" or "pseudo memories"). When I sat down to watch this movie I was prepared to be showered with the standard media nonsense about "repressed memories" unlocking "facts" from decades earlier or some similar fairy tale. I was wrong.

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WARNING
If you are seeking help for personal struggles and a therapist, counselor or friend says that "recovering childhood memories can help you get better" then IMMEDIATELY get up from your chair (or off the couch), run to the door, open it and flee. Hundreds of thousands have lost families, years of productive living and squandered immense wealth with tragedy inducing therapy that produces horrid false memories, splinters families, isolates the client and is documented to cause decline in mental health.