Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Pennsylvania, 1993. After getting caught with another girl, teenager Cameron Post is sent to a conversion therapy center run by the strict Dr. Lydia Marsh and her brother, Reverend Rick, whose treatment consists in repenting for feeling “same sex attraction.” Cameron befriends fellow sinners Jane and Adam, thus creating a new family to deal with the surrounding intolerance.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post benefits enormously from a restrained, naturalistic lead performance by Chloë Grace Moretz and strong supporting work from Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck — the trio's chemistry is the film's beating heart. The conversion therapy setting is handled with admirable subtlety, avoiding melodrama in favor of quiet dread, which gives it a distinctive tone within its genre. The plot, however, moves episodically without strong dramatic momentum, and the ending feels abrupt and underdeveloped — the escape resolution arrives too quickly to feel fully earned. Cinematography is competent and period-appropriate but unremarkable. Novelty is moderate: the subject matter and YA source material place it within a recognizable coming-of-age LGBT drama tradition, though its restraint and 1990s specificity lend it some distinctiveness.