Metacritic reviews

This is a gripping and sad drama that puts a tremendous amount of faith in its performers and audience, and for all the emotion and tenderness in the rest of this year’s Sundance crop, this is the first film that left me a complete broken-down mess by the end.

Akhavan elicits finely layered performances from her cast. Moretz digs deeper than she has in years for a sensitive lead turn that harmonizes especially well with her co-stars.

In the end, Cameron Post is a damning indictment of institutional Christianity and adults who make it their mission to tamp down kids’ spirits in the name of God.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a small movie, far too modest and knowing to surrender to melodrama and apply cosmetic fixes to deep wounds...but it beautifully articulates the need for young people to realize the validity of who they are, and even more beautifully crystalizes the moment when that starts to happen.

Miseducation has a funny, breezy surface — even though tragedy predictably intervenes at one point — but Cameron’s wry sense of humour doesn’t diminish how warping these conversion centres are, slowly instilling in people the sense that they’re faulty.

It’s telling that the filmmaker captures one of Gallagher’s best moments in a long and relatively uneventful take situated at a breakfast table; this movie may wander, but Akhavan’s attention to perfect little moments is unwavering.

While it doesn’t land with as much impact as it should, the contradictory, heart-numbing effects of such a dehabiliting program are conveyed with a keen sense of nuance by Akhavan.

Where Akhavan succeeds is whenever she has the kids doing things teenagers would be doing.

The best part of “Miseducation” is the diverse group of adolescents sharing Cameron’s experience.

What a shame that this well-meaning look at the absurdity of gay conversion camps — it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year — lacks the teeth to make its points stick.