"To "Fake It" is to Survive in "Boy Erased"

"God will not love you the way you are now," proclaims the man apparently trying to help. "Our family's just so normal," insists his mother. "You're gonna love it here," claims a fellow patient. "You can't live here if you're homosexual," asserts his father. Sent to conversion therapy by his religious parents, Jared Eamons faces an inner trial inflamed by vicious attacks under the guise of God's grace in "Boy Erased." As Jared (Lucas Hedges) lives out of a hotel room with his mother (Nicole Kidman) and attends the "refuge program" every day, he struggles to not break beneath the weight of the traumatic methods of conversion therapy and his own evocative emotions and memories. Jared reflects on the signs and events that led to his sexual awakening and his eventual outing as he writes lists of "moral inventory," creates sin-filled genograms, and attends the funeral of a living boy at conversion therapy. Hassled by his mother for sticking his arm out the car window and expected to run the family car dealership by his father (Russell Crowe), Jared adopts the mantra "fake it 'til you make it," leaning into a feigned repentance to save what little is left of himself.

"Boy Erased" illustrates the malicious environment fostered by conversion therapy, but it also tells a common story of imposed expectations and broken precedents. Jared faces a fork in the road, forced to choose the path of a good-standing Christian boy that his parents have chosen for him, but Jared dreams of running down his own path of love and liberation. Self-effacement is expected of Jared, but he vacillates between concern for his family and elusive self-preservation. The other characters around Jared grapple with their own volatile trajectories: Jared's mother must decide how to deal with the abject reality of conversion therapy, Jared's father must figure out how to reconcile with his son after exiling Jared to a life of despair and misery, and the patients of the refuge program must learn to survive under the barrage of abuse.