Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Boy Erased Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 1, 2019

There's a popular aphorism that is often touted by some genuinely religious folks that states "God doesn't make mistakes". Yet there can also be something of a disconnect between that belief and a simultaneously held opinion by these same people that other created beings need to be taken to task for not toeing whatever line the believers think needs to be toed, an insistence on change that perhaps has the subliminal implication that whatever is wrong is not the fault of any Divinity, but indeed of an extremely fallible human. That insistence on “right” behavior is probably nowhere more intense than in matters of sexuality, and Boy Erased is a well intentioned if perhaps too rote exploration of so-called “gay conversion therapy”, a technique (or set of techniques) that has become increasingly controversial in the wake of several “defections” from its ranks by its practitioners, not to mention even more horrifying after effects like the suicides of some people, typically teens, that are forced to go through it, usually by their concerned parents. (Just a day before I wrote this review, my news feed contained an article about a former gay conversion therapist who had been married — to a woman — for decades, but who had just decided to come out as gay himself.) There's no such ambiguity in Boy Erased, a heartfelt film culled from a real life memoir written by Garrard Conley, as the film is resolutely anti-conversion therapy. One of the kind of interesting things about this cinematic adaptation, though, is that all of the names of the real life participants have been changed, in this case perhaps (to paraphrase the old line from Dragnet) to protect the guilty as well as the innocent.

One of the underlying questions that Boy Erased rather smartly addresses is, who exactly is the gay conversion therapy supposed to be for? Ostensibly, of course, it’s for the “sufferer” (if one subscribes to the notion that homosexuality is an affliction that must be “cured”), but as Boy Erased makes abundantly clear, conversion therapy is often as much for any parents involved, especially if they’re overly devout types like Baptist preacher Marshall Eamons (Russell Crowe) and his wife Nancy (Nicole Kidman). When their son Jared (Lucas Hedges) is “outed” as gay, Marshall enrolls Jared in a conversion therapy “course” headed by Victor Sykes (Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the adapted screenplay and directed). What’s so ironic about this “who is it for?” aspect is that the conversion therapy depicted in the film tends to explicitly blame bad parenting for at least contributing to a kid’s “gayness”.

Edgerton’s structure for the film ping pongs between various timelines, allowing for a kind of inherent dialectic that seeks to detail Jared’s past and therefore “formative” influences, though it should be noted that the underlying incident that leads to Jared being outed is actually kind of shocking, especially since it could be argued that Jared is actually victimized twice by an almost sociopathic predator (I may be overstating this a bit, but this aspect of the film is fairly disturbing, though I'm assuming it's based on what actually happened to Conley). While the depiction of the initial victimization might strike some as hyperbolic, in other ways the film is often surprisingly nuanced in its depiction of the various relationships at play, though, and the family dynamic among the Eamons is handled with both honesty and a certain amount of provocative content as well. What’s fascinating about the formulation of the various character interactions is how Jared’s indoctrination in the conversion therapy institution does little if anything to change his inherent feelings, but actually leads to Nancy becoming more “woke” about both her son’s sexuality and her own place as mother and wife. Even Marshall is shown to have genuine concern for his son, in a role that might have been fashioned to be a “secondary villain” (so to speak). In fact a late scene between Marshall and Jared after Jared has left the conversion therapy clinic probably delivers the single most emotional moment of the film.

The “chief villain” is never in doubt in the film, with Edgerton’s Victor Sykes given to constant haranguing and a tacit approval of other “techniques” that verge on (and maybe more than merely verge on) actual physical abuse. The conversion therapy sequences are alarming, to say the least, but they have the ring of truth, a veracity helped by the variant reactions other “campers” have to the approaches they’re forced to submit to. The strategies the kids come up with to cope with a situation that for all intents and purposes amounts to being held prisoner give the film some of its most potent content. Where the film may stumble a bit is in its late moments, where an admittedly bittersweet but nonetheless kinda sorta “happy ending” may not fully convey the horrors that gay conversion therapy has created among those forced to undergo it. Instead there's an almost curiously sanguine quality to a final image that might seem overly whimsical considering what has gone before.

Note 1: I'm not sure if this was supposed to be some kind of subliminal message as to how messed up the conversion therapy place was, or was simply an inadvertent gaffe, but the flag hanging on the auditorium wall in several scenes is backwards, with the stars to the right.

Note 2: My colleague Brian Orndorf wasn't quite as impressed with Boy Erased as I was. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Boy Erased Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Boy Erased is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This is a rather interesting film from a stylistic standpoint, which is not to say it ever achieves anything close to a "wow" factor visually. In fact, cinematographer Eduard Grau talks overtly about how "ugly" locations are in the film in an a worthwhile interview I found you can listen to here. There's also a rundown on this film's kind of unusual gambit of combining actual film with digital in this article. The article linked to also includes a telling quote from Grau where he says the use of Zeiss lenses helped with both a pastel appearance and "the softness of the images", and as can hopefully be gleaned from many of the screenshots accompanying this review, there is a hazy, almost weirdly dreamlike ambience to much of the imagery, where use of any bold primaries is fleeting at best. A lot of the film also takes place in fairly dimly lit environments, and as such the palette tends to look downright drab some of the time, though many interior scenes look like they've been graded slightly toward almost a beige or brown side of things, something that may only further amplify the "ugliness" (to use Grau's terminology) of some of the imagery.

Boy Erased Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Boy Erased features a serviceable DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which provides some decent surround activity with regard to an often quite touching score (including some nice source cues), and occasionally with ambient environmental sounds when the film ventures outside. Even some of the more straight ahead dialogue scenes have noticeable spaciousness and immersion in scenes where a bunch of characters are gathered together for various "therapy" sessions. Dialogue is always rendered cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

Boy Erased Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted and Extended Scenes (1080p; 32:54)


• Jared Revealed (1080p; 3:10) briefly focuses on the character played by Lucas Hedges.


• Becoming the Eamons (1080p; 5:41) is another brief EPK that looks at additional characters played by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe.


• Man Consumed: Joel Edgerton (1080p; 4:32) features writer, director and co-star Edgerton.

Boy Erased Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Boy Erased doesn't really pull any punches with regard to its anti-gay conversion therapy standpoint, but in a number of other ways, the film is commendably nuanced and multifaceted. All three of the Eamons characters feel real and properly uncertain about how to deal with various situations. Kind of ironically given the fact that Edgerton wrote and directed the film, it's his character of Victor Sykes that could have used a bit more development, especially given hints that are dropped about him which are more or less confirmed in a couple of text cards at the end of the film documenting what happened to various characters. This is a tough film to watch at times, but it offers some excellent performances and a thoughtful survey of how a kid coming out (whether or not by force is another matter) affects a family. Technical merits are solid, and Boy Erased comes Recommended.