Joel Edgerton might not be the first person you’d expect to make a movie based on Boy Erased, Garrard Conley’s memoir of his experience in gay conversion therapy. The writer/director has steadily staked a claim as a reliably terrific actor in action- and suspense-oriented fare; see Animal Kingdom, Warrior, Zero Dark Thirty, Midnight Special, and It Comes at Night for proof. (Edgerton was also the sole redeeming factor of Netflix’s orc-cop buddy flick Bright, in which he, nearly unrecognizable under pounds of makeup, turned in a terrific, emotive performance about 1,000 times better than the movie deserved.)
While Edgerton gives himself a juicy role in Boy Erased as the slightly deranged leader of a conversion therapy program, he’s otherwise content to give center stage to the film’s timely and important story. It stars Lucas Hedges as Conley’s stand-in, Jared Eamons, and Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman as his well-meaning but conservative parents who send him away in a misguided attempt to turn him straight.