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When the usual resources and programs aren’t enough, some parents seek out more intensive programs to help turn their troubled teens’ lives around. And when one of those kids ends up enrolled in a wilderness therapy program in The Wilderness, he’s forced to face his own issues while fighting to survive.
The Wilderness stars Hunter Doohan as Ed, a troubled teenage boy who’s given one last chance to get his life together when he’s sent away to a wilderness therapy program in the Utah desert. Together with three other boys, he has to learn how to survive in the harshest of conditions while hiking each day through the rugged landscape and sleeping each night under the stars. But the time away from real life isn’t therapeutic for all of them—and one of the other boys, Miles (Lamar Johnson), rebels against authority, determined to escape.
As they hike together through these challenging conditions, scaling mountains and learning survival skills along the way, these four teenage boys and their three leaders journey through some stunning scenery—most of the time in silence. There isn’t a whole lot of conversation here—just the occasional comment or jab or warning from these kids who are just trying to survive. It makes for a quiet, introspective film, but it’s also rather haunting and suspenseful—because there’s something about the program’s leader, James (Sam Jaeger), that will keep audiences guessing, wondering if there’s more going on here than just wilderness rehabilitation.
In the meantime, though, throughout the journey, we watch Ed go from defiance to acceptance to growth, from hating his mother for putting him through this program to understanding why she had to do it, from wanting to run away to Thailand with Miles to wanting to look out for him. It’s a grueling and dramatic journey filled with challenges and regret—and so many different obstacles to overcome along the way. In the end, you might not know how to feel about everything that played out for Ed and the others, but it’s definitely a thought-provoking film about troubled teens in this last-chance program.
The Wilderness is definitely a challenging film—and sometimes it doesn’t seem to know which story it wants to tell and which perspective it wants to offer, which can be frustrating. But Hunter Doohan and Lamar Johnson both give meaningful performances as these two troubled kids who have come to the end of their rope.
You can join Ed on his journey when The Wilderness arrives in theaters on October 17, 2025.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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