**** outta *****

4 outta 5

Boy Erased is a character drama that feels like a horror movie. Writer/director/actor Joel Edgerton creates a distinct sense of foreboding menace that rides through the film, making the subject matter feel appropriately disturbing as the main character is trapped in an aggressively psychologically damaging hellhole of “gay conversion therapy”. If there is a fault, the movie seems to end about 20 minutes before it actually ends. Still, this is an intense experience that shows how cult like psychological manipulation can try to tear a person apart.

Jared (Lucas Hedges) is young man who is sent to “gay conversion therapy” camp by his conservative parents, the loving but worrying Nancy (Nicole Kidman) and reverend and car dealership owner Marshall (Russell Crowe). At the camp, Jared finds the overbearing and constantly yammering camp councillor leader and therapist of dubious background, Victor Sykes (Edgerton). Sykes constantly berates, belittles and tells his “students” that they need to pray the gay away. The place isn’t exactly a prison but they confiscate personal belongings and lock the young adults inside. But Jared is going to college and expanding his horizons, something that Sykes says distracts from Jared’s therapy. But the more Sykes and his cronies try to break Jared down, the more he tries to break free.

Hedges puts in a great performance that slowly evolves. Maybe a wee bit too slowly because he is almost completely stone faced for the first half of the movie but that makes sense since he’s been meekly forced into this by his parents. As the movie goes on, he reveals more and has a couple of really great scenes, climaxing in a dramatic confrontation with the therapist, Sykes. Pulling triple duty, Edgerton plays Sykes as insidiously evil, saying hateful, hurtful things in a very calm way. Edgerton’s direction is a lot of chilly, slow, shadow enveloped wide shots which adds to the sense of menace that feels like a horror movie. There’s a disturbing scene involving Jared and someone he meets at college that absolutely horrific and doesn’t flinch away from what is happening. The scene is sort of nasty and exploitive, but it is effective. 

Crowe and Kidman as the parents are both sympathetic and pretty horrible people because they love their kid but are forcing him into this. Kidman grows over the course of the film, starting off as a dutifully obedient wife. There is a small moment when Jared points out their “course” handbook is riddled with spelling errors as she starts to doubt the authenticity of the place. Probably the best moment she has is where she asks Sykes what his qualifications are. As the father, Crowe doesn’t play it loud or overbearing, which he often can, but instead Marshall seems to think this is what is best. The best scene in the movie is when Jared freaks out during one of his sessions. It’s very intense but afterwards the movie still devotes more time to Jared and his parents relationship which isn’t as dramatically stirring as Jared’s big confrontation.

The movie feels claustrophobic that Jared is stuck in a situation where he can’t leave. Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’ discordant, freaky score plays almost entirely throughout which accentuates the uncomfortable feeling. Sometimes there might be a bit too many monologues that happen over and over which gets a bit wearying. It seems like a boot camp movie as the intensity of the overbearing leader feels very much like the Drill Sargent in Full Metal Jacket. Boy Erased could use a little humorous levity since it’s so intensely dark. Probably the closest thing to a joke is when, in an absurd moment, one of the girls is told to organize the boys by who looks the most “manly” and there’s a really funny reaction when she puts one right at the opposite end. That same person is later stuck in a batting cage and falls all over themselves which is darkly funny, especially when the parents show up and tear a strip off Sykes saying he could have caused their kid a concussion.

There’s a bunch of characters that populate the centre and they are briefly sketched out for emotional impact. Sarah is a girl who looks really sad as actress Jesse LaTourette gets in a great, heartbreaking moment where she indexes her “sins”. David Joseph Craig plays an office worker who seems like he could snap at any moment on Jared. Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s bassist Flea plays an ex-con convert who is gives a lot of scary speeches about how he’s been “cured” but in private moments he is a leering creep. One of the saddest characters is Britton Sear as Cameron, a big quiet guy who is holding a lot back. There’s a chilling scene where he is tormented by people trying to “save his soul” and he is instrumental in Jared’s important moments near the end.

There is a lot of great stuff in Boy Erased even if it does seem to make the same point a few times, underline it, and then circle back again. But that’s probably what it is like for people stuck in these “therapy” camps. It is a dark movie yet it does show that eventually love can find a way out of the darkness if they look hard enough.