Review of Boy Erased (2018) by United001 — 10 Nov 2018

I attended this movie showing with a good friend who is gay but had not read the book upon which the movie is based and only had vague awareness of anything specific but the general theme of gay conversion therapy.

By halfway through the movie, he had to leave the theater for a short period of time because the movie upset him. Turns out although he was never in formal gay conversion therapy he told me that the religiosity of the movie was accurate so much that it was like watching a bit of a nightmare of his own experiences in religious circles as well as with his own father.

At the end of the movie, he stated that he was very glad to have seen the movie, but like a PTSD survivor, he said that he would never watch the movie again. He did comment that he would consider sending a copy of the movie upon its release in that manner to his father who in many ways resembled Jared's father.

I found the movie slow in places and it does jump back and forth through time, but that is how the book was written by Mr. Conley. I have not seen the other gay conversion movie recently released. This movie takes seriously what "But I'm A Cheerleader" made fun of and was entirely useless to point out the extreme emotional damage done by such practices that still go on today and are not labeled as crimes of child abuse, which is what gay conversion attempts really are.

The acting was off the charts good. Lucas Hedges perfection. Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe spectacular. Joel Edgerton was spectacular. The score is superb, Troye Sivan very good in his minor role, but his singing as always perfect for the occasion.

In my opinion, Boy Erased took a good book that was somewhat muted in emotion until the very end and used it to create an extremely powerful screenplay that is both appropriately emotional as well as instructive in a way the movies sometimes need to be when such ignorance such as gay conversion therapy needs a voice to point out what society still allows that is still so wrong on so many levels.