Review of The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) by L G — 11 Aug 2018

While it's hard to watch a film about a Christian LGBT conversion therapy camp in which confused and vulnerable young people are being emotionally abused; it is equally hard to criticize a film with the best intentions in the world that ends up dramatically lacking and a bit too by the book.

Other than two dramatic events that bookend the film - the initial discovery of the homosexual transgression and the inevitable tragedy in camp that awakens the central characters - the rest of the film plods along depicting camp life as a mundane day-to-day existence with small rebellious acts bubbling underneath.

It is a fair and realistic portrayal with a capable and convincing young cast, and Jennifer Ehle's psychiatrist who runs the camp, invoking the quietly menacing dominance (not to mention the bullying tendencies) of Catherine Keener's character in Get Out.

As for Chloe Grace Moretz, her Cameron is a passively drawn and often quiet and reactive character, though she is no less watchable for it. Writer-director Desiree Akhavan's debut will have its supporters who are into indie films that underplay emotions to deliberately avoid melodrama and based on Emily M.

Danforth's very personal book, the film even resists the temptation to demonize the adults in charge but instead paints them as misguided and clueless (which the film makes a perfectly good case for and literally spells it out on-screen).

So if you like what I've described above, then this is probably the Gay Conversion therapy film for you but I'll wait and see (because there is another one coming out later this year) as this left me a little flat and expecting more, especially with the spuriously uplifting ending that I find not entirely convincing.