Dream Boy is a 2008 gay-themed Southern Gothic drama film written and directed by James Bolton, and based on Jim Grimsley's 1995 novel of the same name.

Fifteen-year-old Nathan Davies (Stephan Bender) moves to St. Francisville, Louisiana, a small Southern town with his parents (Thomas Jay Ryan and Diana Scarwid) and starts to befriend the older boy next door, Roy (Maximillian Roeg), fellow high school student and bus driver, who is in a relationship with Evelyn (Rooney Mara).

After they finish their work, the boys go for a walk in the woods, finding an old cemetery, where they stop and start kissing.

Roy pulls out and gets dressed When Nathan gets home that night, his father wants to know if he had a good time.

He ties a string up to his dresser drawer and bedpost, tucks his pillows under his sheets, and moves to the floor to sleep.

Nathan sees his father and closes his eyes tight, when Roy enters the room again.

Roy storms out of the room, and Nathan hears the voice again, and is suddenly knocked unconscious.

Blood starts pooling on the floor beneath Nathan's head, and Burke leaves him in the attic.

At the end of the story, Roy is driving the bus and looks in the mirror to an empty seat, but when he looks a second time, Nathan is there smiling at him.

The movie departs from the novel and leaves the impression that Nathan is truly dead, and that the previous scenes were a wishful dream sequence of one of the two boy lovers, presumably Roy.

The book has the boys meeting in the yard of Roy's church, running together into the woods to talk things over, and deciding to run away together since Roy has been seen kissing Nathan by both Burke and Randy, and both boys will surely be outed to their families and the whole community.

Dream Boy first screened at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany on February 12, 2008.