Himself a survivor of abuse in one such unlicensed clinic, Gaglia has chosen to bare his own story for the sake of public enlightenment about the troubling issue. In addition to raising awareness of such abuse, he made this film to help other survivors regain their voices and feel validated by knowing that their pain is real and shared by others, he mentioned during a phone interview. He believes that a two-pronged approach of increasing mass awareness and helping survivors cope is the key to changing the current state of affairs in many clinics across the country.

When I first watched GW, I found myself profoundly uncomfortable. Some of this was because of the greenish light that fills the inside of this particular clinic. Green fluorescent color timing has been common in horror and suspense films for many years, creating the illusion that something unnatural is going on, making everything look sickly and washed out. Before speaking with Nick, I thought the timing was just another gimmick, something gleaned from watching too many James Wan movies. But he explained to me that it was not, and in fact, he doesn't even watch horror movies. "When you're in an institution like that, that's the way it feels," he said.

The other component of the film that disturbed and shocked me was my lack of reaction to the continual violence portrayed in it. Violence has historically been reported to be a major component of keeping order at these facilities, but the violence shown in GW does not function as I thought it might: to increase emotional tension among viewers. The effect of the repeated strikes, restraint holds and deprivations ceased to shock me after the first scene, where Tony Serra (George Gallagher) is first committed to the institution, pinned, strip-searched, verbally assaulted and coerced into signing away his freedom. I found myself becoming rapidly desensitized to the harsh treatment, and the only thing that shocked me out of it, ultimately, was when it stopped as Nicholas Serra (Gaglia's own father) confronted the program director Dr. Hiller (Albert Insinnia). The verbal and physical tension between the two men is palpable, despite the fact that the two never come into physical contact.

Many films have made great use of blending documentary and narrative footage, especially in the past few years with the recent upsurge of this style coming from North Carolina School of the Arts graduates. Though he went to Hunter College, not NCSA, Gaglia has also chosen to blend documentary style interviews with his own father and grandmother into his harrowing narrative. The truthful, "in the moment" candidness of these interviews validated the film immensely to me. Without genuine interviews, the choppiness of the narrative and lack of transitions would have overwhelmed me into complete confusion.

Ironically, confusion was one of Gaglia's main goals in creating GW. He felt a need to create a truthful—though perhaps slightly watered down—version of what these clinics are really like in order to help survivors communicate their experiences, he said. But he also wanted to show those of us who have never experienced such a place just how cult-like and baffling it can truly be. "Not a lot of things will flow from one thing to the next," said Gaglia, "When you're inside a type of institution like this, you don't know what's going on from one moment to the next. It's very confusing and brainwashy, and I wanted to create that confusion for the audience member." Through his somewhat haphazard and random editing, Gaglia certainly does confuse and disturb his viewers. "You feel yourself go on an emotional journey but are not necessarily able to analytically establish why you feel how you feel," he said.

All of these criticisms being what they are, I still strongly believe in Gaglia's potential, and the value of GW. Though it may still be rough around the edges, and sometimes awkwardly put together—interviews functioning as transitions, rather than actual transitions to indicate passage of time—this topic is a difficult one to tackle, especially when one is so emotionally invested in it, as Gaglia. "It was more cathartic than anything else. I really feel like I got something out of me," he said of making this film.

But as well as serving to air his own distress, he's helped hundreds of survivors admit their own abuses and successfully communicate their trauma to their loved ones. He's even influenced our own federal government, as it is now seeking to pass bills to enforce federal oversight of independently owned clinics in the US, in order to prevent further abuse. As a young filmmaker, Gaglia has met with exactly the success he sought: not money or fame, but raising national awareness of an important issue and helping many abuse victims to cope with their pain. While he grows as a filmmaker, his directorial voice should only continue to strengthen, hopefully realizing his full cinematic potential in future works.