Surviving Ohio State Review: The Weight of Witness

There is a covenant we imagine when a young person leaves for university. We see these institutions as sanctuaries, places of growth and protection, and few are held in higher esteem than Ohio State. It is more than a school; it is a cultural titan, an entity woven into the very identity of its community.

The documentary Surviving Ohio State is a chronicle of that covenant’s profound and devastating breach. It introduces the decades of sexual abuse perpetrated by Dr. Richard Strauss, a university physician who wielded his authority over student-athletes from the 1970s through the late 1990s.

The film’s narrative structure is not a simple “whodunnit,” as the perpetrator is known. Instead, its cinematic investigation poses a far more chilling question: how could this happen, on this scale, for so long? The focus shifts from the individual predator to the institutional silence that allowed him to flourish.

This gutting story is told directly through the testimony of the men who were victimized, many of them former members of the university’s celebrated wrestling team. Their voices do not just recount history; they demand we question the foundations of the institutions we are taught to revere.

Voices from the Scar

A documentary like this lives or dies by the power of its testimony, and director Eva Orner makes a critical design choice: she trusts her subjects completely. The film’s engine is not archival footage or dramatic reenactment, but the human face, presented in stark, intimate interviews.

There is little cinematic flourish to distract you. You are simply in a room with these men as they recount, with excruciating clarity, the events that marked their lives. The pacing becomes deliberate, allowing the full weight of their words to land. It is an exercise in sustained, uncomfortable focus, where the raw, unvarnished pain of the survivors becomes the film’s primary texture. Their candor is the point.

The film confronts a subject that many narratives of this kind avoid: the specific psychology of male survivors in a culture of hyper-masculinity. These were elite wrestlers, conditioned for toughness and control. Listening to them describe the shame and confusion of being powerless in a doctor’s office is deeply affecting.

They articulate a kind of paralysis that challenges any simplistic notion of “why didn’t you just fight back?”. In game design, we sometimes see mechanics stripped from the player to induce a feeling of helplessness for narrative effect; here, the men’s stories achieve the same result, placing you squarely within their feeling of a world turned upside down.

This feeling was an atmospheric condition, an open secret that functioned like disturbing environmental storytelling. The survivors recount the dark jokes in the waiting room, the warnings passed between teammates about Dr. Strauss’s examinations. These details build a world of pervasive dread, where the danger was known but unspoken, a part of the very air they breathed.

The film then connects this past trauma to its lasting impact—stories of athletic performance declining, of men quitting the sport they loved because the cost became too high. Reading the facts of this case is one thing; hearing the tremor in a man’s voice as he explains how his body, the very instrument of his success, became a source of fear is another experience entirely.

The Architecture of Abuse

The documentary portrays Dr. Richard Strauss not as a shadowy villain but as something far more unnerving: a trusted figure at the heart of the system. He was an established, published physician, a man whose authority was codified by the institution itself.

In a narrative game, he’d be the high-level NPC who gives you quests, the one you’re programmed to trust. The film methodically deconstructs this facade by detailing the mechanics of his abuse with chilling precision.

It reveals a horrifyingly consistent loop. Survivors recount how any visit, for any ailment—a concussion, a sprained ankle—would inevitably end with the same invasive genital examination.

His constant presence in the team showers was another key part of his method, a way to normalize his inappropriate access and blur the lines between medical professional and predator. This wasn’t random; it was a system designed to wear down boundaries.

The film makes it plain that Strauss’s medical coat was his armor. He weaponized his authority, creating a situation where questioning him felt like a transgression against the rules of the world itself. For the young men in his care, challenging a doctor’s orders was almost unthinkable. The power dynamic he engineered was absolute, turning a position of healing into a tool for calculated harm.

The Unseen Boss Battle

After establishing the chilling mechanics of the predator, the documentary skillfully changes its focus. The lens pulls back from the individual monster to reveal the corrupted environment in which he thrived. The film’s argument is that Strauss wasn’t a rogue element; he was a symptom of a systemic rot. The true antagonist of this story isn’t just one man. It’s the institution itself.

The documentary presents the “Buckeye” brand as a kind of monolithic power, an entity whose reputation must be protected at all costs. In the world of Ohio State athletics, winning was the prime directive, creating a culture where inconvenient truths could be ignored or actively suppressed. This protective instinct created the perfect habitat for a predator.

The film then populates this environment with the authority figures who failed to act. It gives voice to the survivors’ direct allegations against wrestling coaches Russ Hellickson and Jim Jordan, placing their consistent, emotional accounts in stark opposition to the coaches’ denials.

The narrative structure here feels like piecing together a conspiracy. The most damning piece of evidence comes not from a wrestler, but from a referee, an outsider who describes confronting the coaches about Strauss’s behavior in the showers only to be dismissed. This moment acts as a powerful piece of third-party verification, corroborating the survivors’ stories.

The film uses these specific points not just to indict individuals, but to paint a much larger picture of failure. It suggests that the problem went far beyond one or two coaches, implicating dozens of people in positions of power. The most profound failure presented here wasn’t a single, loud action, but the collective, deafening silence of those who could have stopped it.

The Mechanics of Truth

Director Eva Orner’s approach is one of quiet confidence, favoring substance over style. The film’s primary mechanic is the direct, unadorned interview, a choice that places immense trust in the power of the survivors’ own words. This sober, investigative style is punctuated by archival footage of the university and its wrestling team in their prime.

The effect is emotionally devastating. Seeing these young men, radiating power and promise in old photographs and match footage, creates a painful dissonance. It’s like finding a cheerful pre-war photo in a post-apocalyptic game; the image of what was lost is rendered deeply haunting by our knowledge of what was happening just off-camera.

Where the filmmaking occasionally falters is in its use of generic reenactments—a sputtering shower head, an empty hallway. Compared to the potent reality of the interviews, these choices feel like weak environmental assets, breaking the immersion rather than enhancing it.

The film’s most difficult narrative choice, however, is its significant focus on Congressman Jim Jordan. There is an undeniable gravity to including such a high-profile figure, and it certainly draws attention to the story.

Yet, it creates a structural imbalance, threatening to narrow a story of widespread institutional failure into a simpler political conflict. It’s a perennial challenge for documentarians: when a single figure becomes a lightning rod, does their presence illuminate the larger darkness or just change the subject?

No Final Cutscene

There is no triumphant final cutscene in Surviving Ohio State. The film denies its audience any sense of neat resolution, because none exists in reality. With Dr. Strauss long dead, the quest for conventional justice is unfinishable.

Instead, the narrative ends on an uneasy, continuing present. We see that the fight for accountability from the university is an ongoing struggle, where official settlements and public statements stand in stark contrast to the survivors’ need for genuine institutional acknowledgment.

The film’s ultimate achievement, then, is not in telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It functions as a permanent record, a damning testament to a system’s failure and the courage of those who endured it.

It gives an immutable voice to the men who were silenced for decades, ensuring their experiences cannot be dismissed or forgotten. The credits may roll, but the film’s central purpose—to bear witness—has no endpoint.

After premiering on June  9, 2025 at the Tribeca Film Festival, the documentary Surviving Ohio State premiered on June 17, 2025, on HBO and Max.

Full Credits

Director: Eva Orner

Writers: Jon Wertheim

Producers and Executive Producers: Eva Orner, David Glasser, George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Joshua Rofé, Steven J. Berger, Jon Wertheim, David Hutkin, Bob Yari, Ron Burkle, Corey Salter, Colin Smeeton, Marc Rosen

Cast: Jon Wertheim, Mark Coleman, Ilann Maazel

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Nick Higgins

Editors: Charles Olivier