There’s no denying They/Them probably had good intentions. On the surface, there was plenty to like about the LGBTQ+ title. Most people including myself love Kevin Bacon too. Suffice it to say, performances harnessed under the title ranged from Bacon’s steely excellence to the handful that was more rigid and odd.
There were tiny glimmers of a good movie from time to time. People want more films with atypical characters. There was some excellent character development with Jordan (Theo Germaine) but he was the only interesting character arc of the lot. And that’s where the niceties end.
They/Them is the opposite of what the horror community wants when we dream about more relevant archetypes. Sadly each LGBTQ+ member was represented by the same old set. We were still given the jock, the angry girl, the popular girl, and similar types of fodder. And they were largely one-dimensional.
I consider myself a slasher fan, even the films that love to perpetuate a stereotype. But then I want to be entertained after. Blumhouse got this one very, very wrong.
It seems I’m not alone in thinking this way either. As soon as I finished watching They/Them I took to Letterboxd. Scores of reviewers poked fun at its ability to be both homophobic and unbecoming to the slasher subgenre. Others brought to light new words created for just such an occasion. I’d never heard words like transmisogyny before but made sense when I was done with this film.
Kevin/Bacon
In most scenarios, a slasher movie takes out various people we like. At the very least there is a threat to people we don’t want to be slashed. In They/Them, set in a conversion camp if you didn’t guess who the murderer was by halfway, you were probably asleep.
The use of a conversion camp was an uphill battle squashed by an unimaginative mess of a script. The Pink Glee rendition of Perfect twisted my face up more than when they made one of the cast kill a Basset Hound with a rifle.
Writer/Director John Logan (Gladiator)
Distributed by Peacock and produced by Blumhouse Productions.
They/Them is rated
1 who was this movie made for? out of 5
They/Them Movie Trailer
