As everyone knows by now, Netflix has at its disposal such a monumental bank of user information that it effectively knows what we want to see before we even know it ourselves. This has never been more clear than during this long, flat featureless post-Christmas week, when Netflix knows that all we really want is to be bummed out beyond all comprehension.
You saw it in 2015, when the world coalesced around Making a Murderer after the glow of Christmas had burned off. And in 2019, when it gave us the deceptively grim documentary Don’t F**k With Cats. And in 2021, when we had Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer. And now it has chosen to fill the last dead week of this year with Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare, a documentary full to the brim with death, sexual assault and child abuse. Netflix, you shouldn’t have.
