Jared (Lucas Hedges) is forced to attend gay conversion therapy by his father who is a devout Baptist preacher. Based on a memoir by Garrard Conley, Boy Erased is Joel Edgerton’s second feature film as writer/director/star following the promising thriller The Gift.

I found Boy Erased to be a bit of a conundrum whilst watching it. The subject matter is difficult and the acting good, but it feels so emotionally distant and keeping us at an arms length that I struggled to find it entertaining. Hedges plays Jared as a buttoned up young man desperate to do right by his parents and only really has one outward display of emotion in the entire film. Edgerton’s lead conversion therapist Victor Sykes May use controversial methods but he is human and not a villain you can root against. Whilst Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe as Jared’s devout parents are mostly detached and indifferent.

The amount of animated emotional displays can be counted on one hand, but it is only when these were happening that I was engaged.

The result is interesting, but feels remote and emotionless.