Dennis Mahoney says that sadomasochism, homoeroticism, and homophobia are highlighted in Bryan Singer's retelling of Stephen King's novella. In Frames of Evil: The Holocaust as Horror in American Film, Caroline Picart and David Frank write that the face of evil is represented in the film as Nazism, oft labeled as "quintessentially innate [and] supernaturally crafty", but also "in a more subterranean way, dangerously blurring the boundaries between homoeroticism and homosexuality". The Nazi monstrosity in Apt Pupil is structured through sexual "abnormality", where a series of binary dichotomies are introduced: "normal versus monstrous, heterosexual versus homosexual, and healthy versus sick". An additional dichotomy, victimizer (masculinized) versus victim (feminized), reflects the film's "hidden tensions" in which Bowden and Dussander's roles of powers are reversible. While the "set of perversions" that unfold in the novella are misogynistic, the film unfolds the set as "ambivalently homoerotic and homophobic". The film removes the novella's misogyny and leaves intact the underlying homoeroticism of the central characters. The film also expounds the connection between homophobia and how male Holocaust victims are portrayed. The central characters Todd Bowden and Kurt Dussander are onscreen most of the time, and they are frequently framed in close proximity, which Picart and Frank describe as "[intensifying] a homoerotic intimacy [which is] punctuated by dread of contact with the monstrous". Homoeroticism in Apt Pupil is further demonstrated by the focus on Todd's body. In the opening scene in which Bowden is in his bedroom during a stormy night, "the ever-encroaching camera and the lighting fetishize Todd's youthful body", similar to the fetishism of the female body in films like Psycho (1960). This depiction creates a dualism in which "he is now simultaneously dangerous and endangered" in his homophobic and homoerotic ties to Nazism. When Bowden gives Dussander an SS uniform to wear and in which to march under Bowden's orders, the student's demands are more heightened in the film as "more dominant and voyeuristic", according to Picart and Frank. Bowden tells Dussander, "I tried to do this the nice way, but you don't want it. So fine, we'll do this the hard way. You will put this on, because I want to see you in it. Now move!" The editing style of the Nazi march scene juxtaposes Dussander marching in the uniform and Bowden reacting to the march. Shots of Bowden's reaction are from a low angle, which reflects "the sexual difference between the characters"; Bowden is masculinized as "the bearer of the [sexual] gaze", and Dussander is feminized as "the object of the gaze". The cutting between Bowden and Dussander "corroborates a homoerotic arrangement of images" which visualizes the latent homoeroticism of the scene from the novella. When Dussander speeds up his march and Bowden tells him to stop, the sped-up shot reverse shot "radically [ruptures] the structure of power", where Bowden loses "control of his sadistic power over Dussander".

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