User reviews

Raw, emotional, and heartbreaking at times, Sean Dunne's Oxyana shows the struggle and loss of drug-addiction in Oceania, West Virginia, a tiny mining town that has its 1,400 citizens succumbing to Oxycontin.

With an atmospheric somber that's reminiscent to the eye-opening Kids (1995) by Larry Clark, the film depicts the struggle of addiction and plays nearly fifteen examples of life-shattering changes you would see in the first forty-five minutes of the A&E's hit-show "Intervention." While filmmaking style doesn't always hit the right chords and not offering any real resolutions or suggestions for fixing the problem, if anything, Oxyana shows the youth of the lost generation being picked off one by one as we remain helpless.

There may be no real answer at this point in time for the problem to be fully resolved. Perhaps that's Dunne's brilliance in an almost waving the white flag sort of fashion. Some of the stories of these people are horrific and you can almost see sympathize with their reasoning for drug usage through their testimonies. The film is polished enough to open the door for discussion by political and movie-goers everywhere and emotional enough to warrant a reaction.

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Oceana, West Virginia is the setting for Sean Dunne's startling portrait of a town beset with prescription drug abuse. Oxyana is the nickname given to the once proud Appalachian coal mining community of 1,400, and the name of this startling documentary which received its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19. Dunne & his crew spent 21 days of filming in the summer of 2012 in Oceana. Oxycana presents the people through a series of incredibly candid interviews. The director conducted open-ended interviews and is able to gain their trust by asking non-judgemental questions. Addiction to pain-killers like OxyContin & Percoset is the reality facing two generations of residents, and the film depicts pregnant mothers expressing fears about what lies ahead for their children. We see addicts shooting up so "the pain goes away" and youth mourning the loss of their friends and family, taken away by overdosing. This is Dunne's first documentary feature, and demonstrates a remarkable skill in allowing them to tell their stories. Oxyana could be set anywhere in North America, and the brutal reality it depicts is not easy to watch and reveals a tremendous talent in documentary film making.

This is a highly visceral topic that I was genuinely very excited about and it had a lot of potential but it seems to never really gotten off the ground.

The movie is interview after interview of how bad it is there and that is just beating the viewer over the head. The film doesn't really go into why the drug problem started, the actual effect the drug has on people or any other background information, it just jumps right into interviews splashed with some scenery shots of the West Virginia region.

The film just really lost my interest after about 15-20min and I was saying to myself "I hope this whole film isn't just interviews" and sure enough it was. The way I would describe the way the film moves is that it goes up introduces the topic to you and just flat lines for about the next 70 min.

Again, I really wanted to like this film as the topic is very important and it really felt like the film was shot over a couple weekends and to shoot a documentary of this breadth can't really be done over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 2012 (which the director stated it was). The film felt far from a finished product.

This documentary seems terribly unfinished. Nothing about how the drugs flow in, why the law enforcement cannot stem the tide, why the residents of this small community seems especially prone to addiction (i am sorry - but just "there is nothing to do here" is a major cop out!).

It appears the documentary makers latched on to a good topic - drug addiction in rural town USA - along with its related social ills - but then just had no direction of where to take it, apart from having a series of interviews.

Unfinished - which is a shame, because so much more could have been done.

This film is a filthy and disgusting exploitation of a hurting people. It is dishonest in the highest regard and weave's the story that the director wants to weave. The highest sin a documentary can commit - raping its source material for sensationalist/shock views. These people seemed to either not know the way their stories were being used, or were gleeful to vomit the fatalism they inherited from their fathers, deprived of attention.

How do I know this? My father was interviewed for this as a community leader. Upon discussing the legal/appearance agreements, he was adamant about the way he wanted to answer the questions and the narrative that he had to share based on his experiences in the area - one that was realistic, yet very hopeful. The director quickly said "that's not the story we're trying to tell" and packed up their gear. My father, gladly, did not give an interview.

This worthless film's only saving grace is a competent technical job by hapless crew who didn't care for the people they were exploiting. A horrid and sad excuse for a documentary by a director who has made a name out of abusing the narratives of people on the fringe of society.

Pathetic. Revolting. Dishonest. Garbage.