They/Them Review: Kevin Bacon-Starring Slasher Proves Hollow
The post They/Them Review: Kevin Bacon-Starring Slasher Proves Hollow appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: Conversion therapy is the pseudo-scientific process of trying to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity through manipulation, abuse and torture. Generally operated by religious groups who claim to be doing their victims a favour, this practice is generally carried out in isolated retreats on groups of young people. The new horror film They/Them attempts to frame this specific real-world evil through a likely more familiar horror movie iconography.
After all, the idyllic American summer camp has been a home for terror for decades, in the form of brutal murders and/or adolescent awkwardness. A nice trip to the woods offers young people a place of freedom, disconnected from who you’ve been before — while the offer to serial killers is simply a place, disconnected.
Most famously utilized in 1980’s Friday the 13th, the setting has become a mainstay of the slasher genre for good reason. It is in this canon that John Logan’s film haphazardly inserts itself, both in the casting of Friday the 13th breakout Kevin Bacon as the unsettling camp counselor Owen Whistler (Bacon also served as executive producer) and in the styling of its conversion camp setting.
But I’m a Cheerleader, Probably: It is through Whistler that we are introduced to both the camp and its latest batch of victims; a crew of young LGBT people of varying identities who are allowed little more depth than the reasons for their arrival (which they state shortly after arriving).
The first wrinkle in the film’s concept comes in this introductory scene as Whistler introduces himself as a progressive and inclusive conversion camp leader, performatively allowing nonbinary resident Jordan (Theo Germaine) to choose which gendered cabin they sleep in, though this courtesy is not extended to Alexandra (Quei Tann), a transgender woman who is outed shortly into her stay.
Once this status quo is established, the film does little to disrupt it, offering scene after scene of our cast dealing with the psychological and emotional abuse the setting implies, with the very occasional flash of something darker behind the scenes. These early scenes gesture at ideas that could make for a unique perspective, including references to supposedly progressive transmisogyny and the developing language of homophobes who know that slurs won’t win their battles anymore. But those gestures suggest a nuance that simply does not come.
They/Them (Peacock)
Cabin Fever: While the cruelty embedded in the idea of conversion therapy is more than clearly illustrated, the film has very little to say beyond this: There is a plainness to its presentation that, in the absence of any kind of tension or catharsis, comes to feel ultimately spectatorial, even in spite of some effective performances from the aforementioned Theo Germaine and Quei Tann.
We are not invited into the inner lives of these characters, no matter how many times the film has someone look defiant in the face of manipulation, which means that the film’s antagonists are in a sense successful; outside of one slightly embarrassing sing-along to a P!nk song that feels retrieved from beneath the bottom of the barrel, no thought is given to the idea of queerness as joyful, transformative, or ultimately positive. While these are perspectives that an audience will ideally bring in themself, it still leaves this story as little more than an exercise in submission.
Aesthetically, things are not very different. From the profoundly uninteresting slasher design to the general direction and image-making, the film is happy to rely on the generic, hoping its adjacency to better films will provide a texture and depth that is otherwise totally lacking. There is nothing offered by They/Them that would not be better provided by a Friday the 13th and Miseducation of Cameron Post double bill, the latter at least having the good taste to choose the 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” for its own singalong.
The Verdict: For the majority of its runtime, They/Them seems to entirely forget its pretense of being a horror movie, with long stretches devoid of any sense of tension at all. If its drama was interesting then this wouldn’t have been as much of a problem, but as it stands, the sharp turn into slasher promised by its title feels like a last-minute remembrance in a series of plodding vignettes, something unfortunately furthered by how incredibly toothless the film’s climax comes to be.
Without spoiling the exact dynamics at play, what the film offers is not an explosion of rage or even a space for rebellion, but further deference to the status quo. And the film’s smattering of slashing comes to a head in a moment that turns the overall effect from thoughtless to actively cowardly.
In a world where LGBT people are continually being attacked for the crime of daring to exist, it is ultimately deeply frustrating to watch a film so convinced that there is something noble about quiet capitulation. But it reveals a fundamental flaw in the film’s construction that its writer and director are seemingly unable to find anything to say about queerness, other than the fact that it exists — as if even this film’s view of our existence is filtered through the framework of our oppressors.
This hollowness reaches its apex in the film’s climax with a conclusion that practically scolds viewers, especially queer ones for having expected some kind of catharsis. Once the terms of the story are laid out plainly and its cast are finally provided an opportunity for rebellion, the smug refusal to follow through on that rebellion leaves one wondering what exactly this movie has to say — beyond the fact that they came up with a clever title.
Where to Watch: They/Them is streaming now on Peacock.
Trailer:
They/Them Review: Kevin Bacon-Starring Slasher Proves Hollow
Guy Dolbey
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