They/Them

Rating – 1/4

*SPOILERS*

       Pronouns, homophobia, gay conversion therapy, and Kevin Bacon returning to his origins in slasher movies. That’s They/Them. A wannabe Friday the 13th knockoff with a social justice message that penetrates you harder than the killer’s knife. Being a horror movie, it definitely has subject material that can scare anyone, especially because it happens in real life.

       But all I did was cringe.

       Jordan (Theo Germaine) arrives at Whistler Camp, a gay conversation camp run by Owen Whistler (Kevin Bacon).

Damn, these names are so creative.

The camp’s goal is to convert LGBT people into being straight and make sure everyone conforms to their gender roles. Guys shoot guns and hunt, girls cook and sew, and every stereotypical and sexist stereotype is followed.

       And Jordan identifies as nonbinary whose pronouns are They/Them. Hmm, I wonder where the movie gets its title from?

       It’s actually the cringey joke that goes: How does a nonbinary samurai kill someone?

       They slash them!

Get it?

Get it?

       Fuck you!

       However, when people at the camp start dying, they realize a killer is on the loose. Who could it be? Is it one of the homophobic counselors? Is it one of the campers seeking revenge? We’ve definitely never seen this before in many other movies…

       Here’s the thing: I don’t disagree with this movie’s message and I agree that homophobia is stupid. Gay conversation therapy is ridiculous and you can’t “cure” homosexuality. We are not defined by any gender or sexual orientation and as the old saying goes, “if gay people want to be as miserable as everyone else, then so be it.”

       But what I do disagree with is this movie’s presentation.

       The one that hits you in the face is how heavy-handed the message is: LGBT people are humans. Again, I don’t disagree with that, but it’s said so often throughout that it becomes laughable and boring. When it’s not telling you that the campers are humans, it shows the counselors being homophobic assholes. The message isn’t clever, it’s just beating a dead horse.

There’s one incredibly cringey scene where the campers sing Pink’s “Perfect”, as if to make sure the audience knows that they’re all…perfect just the way they are.

       Yeah, I think we know. The movie says it in every scene!

       As for the characters, the acting may be fine, but everyone is a stock character. The black actors play the typical, sassy, black characters that speak in slang. One of the campers is a stereotypical gay man (high pitched voice, lisp, colorful clothes and hair), and two of the girls are only there for the hot, lesbian sex scene.

       Because every horror movie needs a hot sex scene!

Not to mention there’s also a girls’ shower scene, as one counselor watches and…well, you know where his hand is.

        Throw in objectifying women to the long list of this movie’s problems.

If it was trying to break stereotypes, why did it resort to using the same old horror stereotypes? Irony, much?

And the worst of all: it’s not scary, in the slasher sense. The killer never targets the campers so there’s really no tension. And all of the victims are the staff, who clearly deserve it, so why should the audience be scared? It’s every horror trope in the book with nothing new, just being forgettable and bland. 

The only scary part is how gay conversation camps are still active and some of the techniques are disturbing. Electroshock therapy, torture, and brainwashing are only some of the “treatments.” Maybe the movie should’ve been about that instead. However, most of the treatments (gun training, cooking classes etc.) are too laughable to be taken seriously.

You can still cook, hunt, and sew no matter if you’re a man or woman. It’s been done for centuries.

They/Them is neither scary nor brings social justice, but is full of heavy-handed cringe. And while it has good representation for the LGBT community and parts of it veer into so-bad-it’s good, the movie relies too much on said representation instead of telling a good story. Virtue signaling, perhaps? All I can say is, gay conversion therapy doesn’t work, but the steps to making a good movie do. Better writing and better direction would be a start. But we didn’t get that.

Ironically, in a movie about identity, it doesn’t even know its own.