- Network: HULU
- Series Premiere Date: Feb 9, 2023
Critic Reviews
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A remarkable work, advancing the prestige true-crime genre’s slow but steady reorientation toward centering survivors. ... Still, I can’t help feeling a lingering discomfort about “Stolen Youth” and its rather harrowing depictions of Ray’s violence.
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With a startling rawness and directness, Heinzerling’s work makes a case for itself as an unusually sensitive and strong outing in its genre.
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This is an admittedly tough watch, heartbreakingly so at time[s]. ... It’s also a journalistically sound effort, and thanks in large part to the victims who bravely agreed to extensive interviews, it could be of great help to others who find themselves or loved ones in similar situations.
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Across its more than three hours — its final episode clocks in at 74 minutes — it has some of the weight and a fair degree of the artfulness of the shows that kicked off the true-crime boom.
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Luckily for the producers, Larry Ray recorded many of those sessions, resulting in a three-part show that’s at times uncomfortably raw, and thus (for those who can stomach it) extremely watchable.
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Stolen Youth isn’t just an informative look at a shocking case. It’s a well-made docuseries that’s always respectful to these survivors.
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"Stolen Youth" gets tricky—and absorbing and salutary—and becomes something other than the regurgitation of the sordid, sensational and expansively scandalous. At a time when playing the victim is au courant, what distinguishes the interviews with Ray's targets is their chagrin, shame and wonderment, even now.
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Documentaries about cults are never breezy affairs, but Stolen Youth is a particularly tough watch. ... What keeps Stolen Youth from being unbearably grim is its final hour, "Larryland," which follows Isabella Pollack, and Felicia and Yalitza in the aftermath of Ray's 2020 arrest.
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