'They/Them': Camp slasher flick has a lot going for it. Why it's ultimately a letdown

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

August 1, 2022 at 5:19 PM·4 min read

Oops!
Something went wrong.
Please try again later.

“They/Them” takes a different approach to the camp-slasher horror movie.

Give writer and director John Logan points for creativity, exceptional inclusion and casting Kevin Bacon. But the movie could have used a lot more of the camp-slasher horror part.

Things get off to a good start on the latter front, at least. A woman is driving through the woods in the middle of the night when one of her tires blows. She checks it, hears something in the woods and soon meets a masked killer. Promising.

During the day a bus arrives at Camp Whistler, an LGBTQIA+ conversion summer camp. That's a form of horror right off the bat, just not of the slasher variety.

Bacon plays Owen Whistler, the owner, and he greets the reluctant campers with a disarmingly tolerant welcome speech. He doesn’t want to convert anyone, he insists. He just wants to help everyone come to their own conclusions.

Good stuff: See the 10 best movies of 2022 (so far)

The inclusion of gay, bi, trans and nonbinary characters is welcome

But there’s something a little creepy about how accepting he is. What kind of a conversion camp is this?

Most of the campers, have brokered some kind of deal with their parents for their participation. Of course they know nothing about the slasher who dispatched the woman in the opening scene.

The weird thing is, no one else does, either.

For a sizable chunk of the film Logan leaves the slasher part alone. We learn about the main characters and why they’re there. We see them interact. Some of them bond. It doesn’t quite rise to character development in most cases, but at least it’s something.

Some characters don’t even get a cursory introduction. There are a handful of campers who are simply there, unnamed, who never say anything. This isn’t a function of the story — they’re not silent assassins or anything. And this isn’t a spoiler, because after a while you forget they’re even there.

Jordan (Theo Germaine) emerges as the natural leader of the group — they are good with a rifle and not afraid to stand up to Owen.

Which becomes a necessity not long after that suspiciously supportive speech at the start. Owen and the staff begin putting the campers through some bizarrely aggressive, violent exercises — at least those who identify as male. As for those who identify as female, they bake pies.

It’s all strange, and if Logan tossed in a couple of murders every now and then it would have an air of dread to layer on top of the bizarre methods the camp employs.

Molly (Anna Chlumsky), the new nurse, seems as if she might be an advocate for the campers. She secretly allows Alexandra (Quei Tann), who is transitioning, to keep her prescriptions, even though Owen has forbidden medicines of any kind.

'Nope': Jordan Peele's latest is a good-not-great ode to old school sci-fi. Watch it anyway

Eventually the kills come, in a big bunch. Certainly it’s different in terms of how these films usually play out, but it’s not all that effective.

Part of the fun in films like this is guessing who's next. Logan doesn't fall into the trap of punishing campers for having sex or drinking, as so many slasher films do. But a little more terror every so often would have improved things considerably.

By the time counselors start getting slashed, it’s turned into a straight-up us-against-them battle. We don’t know precisely who the “them” is, but it doesn’t come as much of a surprise by the time it’s revealed.

He's back: Troy Kotsur, Oscar-winning deaf actor from Mesa, set to star in new series

A homecoming for Bacon, who was in 'Friday the 13th'

Bacon, of course, appeared on the wrong end of an arrow in “Friday the 13th” early in his career. Here he’s got a lot more to do, and he easily shifts between smarmy concerned mentor and something more sinister, and back again. He’s a pleasure to watch.

Germaine’s portrayal of Jordan gives the character a command of every situation that’s both believable and inspiring. No one is going to push them around — or if anyone does, they’re going to push back.

Anna Lore brings more depth to the homecoming-queen trope than the character has on the page, and Darwin del Fabro makes some surprising choices as a camper who has been bullied.

All of that is compelling. These are characters we actually get to know and want to survive, and not the characters we typically see in a slasher film (or in just about any film). It’s the story that’s lacking, the victim pile-up that’s backloaded that bogs things down.

Or speeds them up, maybe, too fast. In a race car, 0 to 60 is a plus. In “They/Them,” it’s just a jumbled mess.

Moving on: The biggest departures from Phoenix TV news in 2022