There have been some powerful reactions to Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased when it’s screened at festivals, with some saying it misses the mark while others are giving it Oscar buzz. However, with it currently having an 84% Fresh rating on RottenTomatoes, it’s certainly had a lot more love than hate.
Here’s the synopsis: ‘“Boy Erased” tells the story of Jared (Lucas Hedges), the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, who is outed to his parents (Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe) at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a conversion therapy program – or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith. Boy Erased is the true story of one young man’s struggle to find himself while being forced to question every aspect of his identity.’
Joel Edgerton wrote and directs the film, as well as playing one of the leader to the ‘therapy’ programme. It’s based on Garrard Conley’s acclaimed memoit, Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith and Family. It also stars Cherry Jones, Michael “Flea” Balzary, Xavier Dolan, Troye Sivan, and Joe Alwyn.
The film arrives in US cinemas in November, ready for an Oscar push. It’ll be in UK cinemas on February 8th 2019. Take a look at the new trailer below. [Read more…]
Last week we had the trailer for the first of two major movies about so-called ‘gay conversion therapy’, the largely discredited idea that you can coerce people into changing their sexuality. The first movie was The Miseducation Of Cameron Poster, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, and now we get our first look at the second, Boy Erased.
At this point it shouldn’t come as too much of a shock to find out Shia LaBeouf is doing something that sounds a bit odd – indeed the only real shock would be if he signed on to make another Transformers movie. With Honey Boy he’s getting a bit personal and meta, playing his own father, while 
Aussie actor Joel Edgerton has seen plenty of success in the likes of Black Mass and Warrior, but The Rover and Jane Got A Gun show he’s a writer to look out for, and he’s also not bad behind the camera, as he proved in The Gift. Now he’s set his sights on the insidious world of gay conversion therapy, as he’s planning to act, write and direct an adaptation of Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir, Boy Erased.
