[Review] They/Them
Set at a gay conversion facility known as Whistler Camp, John Logan’s They/Them follows a group of queer teens under the watchful eye of patriarch Owen Whistler (Kevin Bacon) and his equally domineering cohorts. After Jordan (Theo Germaine) and Alexandra (Quei Tann) are singled out as the only trans people in their group, they are thrust into increasingly violent survival tests. Tensions are ratcheted up by frequent, uncomfortable interactions with facilitators and the presence of a masked killer on camp grounds.
With a slasher film, sometimes you have to trust your instincts as a viewer. That is, of course, until a film like They/Them comes around and bends the rules. The script is meta insofar as it takes the secluded campground with a shady past and knowingly uses it as a tool against the aggressors. While the killer’s streak and the facilitators’ reign of terror are wildly incomparable by the end, the film takes violence and threats thereof to a shocking degree. Logan plays hard and takes the material seriously by putting his dramatic pen to work. The whodunnit aspect of a film like the original Friday the 13th is slightly undercut by the need to keep its own reveal under wraps, but They/Them supplants a high body count with enough existential dread to fill a lake.
It is important to note that Whistler Camp is split boy/girl. Alexandra is forced to reside in the boy’s camp, with Whistler citing a need to keep biological consistency. It’s a form of violence that resonates without the involvement of butcher knives. While Alexandra is ultimately underserved by the script, Logan’s blunt approach to anti-trans hatred exposes the fragility of authority figures who use religion and bio-essentialism as a crutch for their own weaknesses. Lesser media has seen the reveal of villains as closeted queers to inadvertently make the point that we are our own oppressors. The horror of They/Them is based primarily on the anxieties of a reactionary hate group and its struggle for self-preservation.
Each time Whistler grandstands about survival and manhood, his tone is composed, but the fear in his words are palpable. Therapy sessions with Carrie Preston’s character are pointedly damaging and serve to break down each teenager who steps into her office. None of these people can or should be reasoned with, and that’s the point. Logan’s script teases a killer lurking in the shadows, but the real monsters are the people who hold positions of power. And Logan smartly lets the facilitators’ violence transpire slowly throughout the course of the film’s runtime. The dread of survival, therefore, is not just in the uncertainty of who is next in line to be slashed. At Whistler Camp, danger exists equally in the sunlight as it does in the shadows.
With room to breathe and unburdened by franchise expectations, They/Them allows its audience to get to know the core cast as people. And, crucially, it is unconcerned with the increasingly puritanical standards that are often leveled at queer media. Sex, for example, is explored as both a natural progression of feelings between characters and as a means to subvert the tired “sex equals death” trope in slashers. Interestingly, there is also a stark difference between two sex scenes and the degree to which they are both eroticized that deserves consideration beyond the capacity for discourse normally afforded to these films online. For the purposes of this review, one of these scenes leads to a major reveal that is best left unspoiled. Suffice to say that They/Them proves that slashers can be thoughtful about sexuality without being overly condescending to its audience.
Logan’s film is an incisive wrinkle in the current slasher timeline. Not content with merely gesturing towards queer representation, They/Them sits its audience down and commands attention. One of the film’s most revealing scenes is just that: a testimonial of defiant queer experience. Logan’s pacing is steady and centered on character building leading up to this moment. He presents Whistler’s authority in a disarming fashion, setting the stage for vulnerable reveals from each teen at his camp. When they do, each teen on camera explodes with their respective insecurities and hopes for the future.
Tann plays Alexandra close to the chest. Her reason for attending the camp is crafted to keep the details of her personal life out of view. Whereas, her white peers feel the freedom of expressing themselves as they are. The dimension she adds to a story about queerness in the face of bigotry is important, though Alexandra isn’t given nearly as big a platform to shine heroically as Jordan, the film’s closest version of a final subject. Genre films account for some generalization in their main characters, but much of Alexandra is regrettably steeped in platitudes. And the more I mulled it over after a rewatch, I came to the realization that They/Them is refreshingly bold, if compromised.
As excited as I am for They/Them to be released widely, I am doubly curious to know how the finale will play for people. There are swaths of the slasher fandom that are right to prefer an uncomplicated, scary villain and the line between sympathetic and psychopathic is difficult to tow. Briefly, the victim/killer paradigm is shifted to account for an emotional reveal that would be cause for celebration if it didn’t lead to a complete narrative swerve from everything the film accomplishes up to that point. The visual of flashing red and blue lights is an especially unwelcome note on which to close a queer horror film. And the unchallenged presence of police feels completely antithetical to the objective of questioning authority in the film. Personally, the ending is a major let down that not even Pink’s “Fucking Perfect” can rectify. But there is more than enough in They/Them to keep the conversation going in horror and beyond. Messy though this film may be, its attempt at decoupling the slasher from strict gender norms and nebulous rules makes it worth the watch.
