Boy Erased

Jared Eamons[lower-alpha 1] is the son of Marshall Eamons, a successful car dealer and Baptist preacher in Arkansas, and Nancy Eamons, a hairdresser. He begins his first day at the Love in Action gay conversion therapy assessment program in Memphis, Tennessee.

Chief therapist Victor Sykes tells the group that their sexuality is a choice influenced by poor parenting. He instructs them to perform harsh "moral inventories" of themselves and their families and requires them not to tell anyone else about what occurs during the sessions. While performing his moral inventory, Jared thinks of his life prior to entering the program.

In high school, he was happy, though he broke up with his girlfriend upon starting college. Once there, he became friends with another student, Henry. While staying the night in Jared's dorm room in bunk beds, Henry rapes Jared, apologizes and tearfully confesses doing the same to another young man. Traumatized, Jared returns home.

Henry calls the Eamon home and poses as a school counselor in order to out Jared and ensure his silence. Jared tells his parents this was another student who had told him things about his past and was afraid of Jared revealing his secrets. Jared later agrees that he is attracted to men. After consulting with other pastors, Marshall prays over his son, and then signs him up for conversion therapy, to which Jared reluctantly agrees.

Nancy rents a nearby motel room for her and Jared to stay in until he completes the assessment; however, Jared soon discovers that the therapy has no set end point if he fails to convince Sykes that he has become heterosexual. Some students are confessing and playing the game so they can leave; others truly hope to change.

Jared tells his mother the program teaches the participants to see their parents as troubled and that is why they are not supposed to talk about what goes on to them, to safeguard the program's continued funding. Nancy insists Jared let her read the program's handbook, which contains questionable psychology and many grammatical and typographical errors.

It appears that Jared will be at the institution for some time. After failing an exercise, attendee Cameron is humiliated by Sykes in front of the group and intimidated with a fake funeral service. He is beaten with Bibles by both the therapists and his own family and is forcibly dunked in a bathtub as a horrified Jared looks on.

Returning to his moral inventory, Jared thinks of a brief encounter he had with an art student in college. He uses it when it is his time to confess, but Sykes finds holding hands with a boy to be an inadequate admission and pushes him to give more explicit details. Jared says he will not lie, so Sykes pushes him to talk about Henry. He is shocked and refuses, so Sykes then attempts to make Jared "use his anger" and say he hates his father. Jared refuses to do this, as it is Sykes that he is angry with.

Jared storms out of the room, retrieves his phone and calls Nancy, begging her to pick him up. Sykes, his assistants and the other attendees corner him behind a locked door despite Nancy's presence. Cameron stands up for him and helps get Jared to Nancy, who takes him home.

Nancy is horrified that she has allowed her husband to enroll Jared in an unvetted program without researching its practices. Marshall remains adamant about Jared remaining in the program, but Nancy steadfastly overrules him. Soon after, Jared learns from the police, via his mother, that Cameron committed suicide while still in the program's care. Marshall approaches Jared to console him, but Jared turns away.

Four years later, Jared is living in New York City with his boyfriend. He writes an article that exposes the realities of the Love in Action program. Jared returns home to convince his father to read the article and tells him he is the one who must change, not Jared. He invites his father to join his mother in visiting him at Christmas.

Garrard Conley and Joel Edgerton at the Telluride Film Festival

On June 8, 2017, it was revealed that a bidding war had begun between Netflix, Annapurna Pictures, Focus Features, and Amazon Studios for distribution rights to a film package set to star Lucas Hedges, Joel Edgerton, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, and be directed and written by Edgerton, based on Garrard Conley's memoir Boy Erased.[3] On June 21, 2017, it was announced that the bidding war for distribution rights for Boy Erased had boiled down to Netflix and Focus Features, and the latter ultimately won the rights.[4]

In the press release, Edgerton spoke proudly of the project, stating:

I'm excited to work with an ensemble of actors, seasoned and new, to bring Garrard's story to the screen. I think Focus is the perfect partner on this, and I will always thank Garrard for trusting my passion for his life story. I can't think of a better reason to get behind the camera again.[5]

In August 2017, the majority of the supporting cast was announced.[6] In September 2017, Joe Alwyn and Madelyn Cline joined the cast as well,[7][8] and principal photography on the film began September 8, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia.[9][10] In April 2018, re-shoots took place.[11][12][13]

The film makes several key changes to Garrard Conley's 2016 memoir. One pivotal scene in the film depicts the director of Love in Action pushing a lapsed participant onto his knees in front of a coffin and then having the young man beaten with a Bible. This scene does not take place in Conley's memoir.[14] Scenes where a young man is dunked underwater and guards physically attempt to prevent Conley from leaving the treatment facility were also not present in the memoir.

Commentators on this film have focused on the film's portrayal of conversion therapy and the context surrounding its implementation. According to Ross Ufberg in his article "Survival Tales from the Ex-Gay Movement", conversion therapy is best understood as "a form of counseling (vigorously opposed by the American Psychiatric Association) that aims to change the sexual orientation of patients by treating homosexuality as a mental disorder".[15] The specific program referenced in the movie, Love in Action (LIA), was a facility in which individuals spent anywhere from a few weeks to multiple years.[15] LIA represented a faction of a broader Christian, ex-gay movement that was sparked following the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychological Association in 1973, according to Austin Williams Miller.[16] In the years following this removal, various associations funded research to showcase the efficacy of conversion therapy, including the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.[16] Williams Miller notes that activism fueled Boy Erased.[16] Such activism protests the fact that as of May 2019, conversion therapy is still legal for minors in most jurisdictions in the United States.[16]

Multiple sources point out the hypocrisy in some of the members of LIA who are noted in the film. In further analysis of the true story behind the film, Ross Ufberg discussed John Smid, an individual who spent years preaching the LIA ideology but eventually abandoned the program to live an openly gay life.[15] According to Ufberg's analysis, Smid married two women prior to marrying a man.[15] Subsequently, Smid publicly apologized and acknowledged that his "public presence is a trigger" to some people.[15] Williams Miller noted that many of the lead members of LIA now live openly gay lives.[16]

The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on September 1, 2018.[17][18] It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, first for the press and industry on September 8, 2018, and then for the public on September 11, 12 and 15.[19] The film was initially scheduled for release on September 28, 2018,[20] but was pushed back to November 2, 2018.[21]

• Official website
• Boy Erased at IMDb 
• Boy Erased at Metacritic
• Boy Erased at Rotten Tomatoes