✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Denmark, Sweden, United States · 2014
1h 17m
Director Lasse Barkfors
Starring
Genre Crime, Documentary
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In Florida, many sex offenders live under bridges or in woods – or in the trailer park Florida Justice Transitions – known as Pervert Park, which is home to 120 convicted sex offenders. In this tough-to-watch documentary, the residents of this trailer park discuss their experiences living in the outside world.
With a solid execution of storytelling, combined with a powerful statement about how we perceive sex offenders, Pervert Park excels as a documentary that explores not only what it takes to be human, but also why psychological evaluations could be crucial in understanding the forces that bring human to commit crimes in the first place.
Pervert Park never demands forgiveness, only an attempt to understand and to maybe see where these dark impulses come from.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
This challenging but refreshingly candid nonfiction feature is the debut of the talented Swedish-Danish filmmaking couple Frida and Lasse Barkfors, who have not only found a fascinating subject but who also manage to build a case against isolating sex offenders without resorting to such facile shortcuts as voiceovers or heavy editorializing.
Pervert Park reveals a linked chain of incidents; we are all connected whether we admit it or not. What if we all lived in communities where the people around us agreed to help us get better, rather than blaming and shaming us for our transgressions?
The New York Times by Ken Jaworowski
To be sure, nothing in this film is easy to hear. But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be said, and learned from.
The Film Stage by Michael Snydel
There’s an appealing sense of cyclical healing in watching these people go about their daily rituals; in the end, however, Pervert Park feels like an incomplete portrait of this tight-knit community.
The Playlist by Oktay Ege Kozak
Harrowing, uncomfortable, and heartbreaking, Pervert Park is an important film with an urgent, compassionate message.
The documentary broadens well beyond a portrait of this particular facility to address the underlying causes of these crimes and to question how society might more constructively deal with the issues, where offering counseling to abuse victims becomes as important as, if not more so than, persecuting their abusers.
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