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They/Them (2022)

What if “Friday the 13th” crossed paths with “But I’m a Cheerleader” or “Boy Erased”? Setting a contemporary, Blumhouse-produced slasher flick at a conversion camp is so conceptually inspired that it’s hard to believe it’s never been done before until now. Doubling as gender-neutral pronouns and a queer/“other” slasher film, “They/Them” feels like it was specifically made for every LGBTQIA+ horror lover. Opening as a traditional slasher but ending more as a gender empowerment tale, the finished product just leaves too much on the table to really subvert camp-slasher tropes or reach its full potential with more than earnest intentions.

A busload of youths arrives at Whistler Camp. Running the show is the seemingly calm, cool, and possibly progressive director, Owen Whistler (Kevin Bacon, back to camp in a meta stroke of casting). His wife, Cora Whistler (a creepy, Stepfordized Carrie Preston), is the camp therapist; Nurse Molly (Anna Chlumsky) is the newest hiree; and other staff members, alpha athletics director Zane (Boone Platt) and activities director Sarah (Hayley Griffith), are proof of Whistler’s conversion successes. The kids are forced to give up their phones but also their natural desires and how they identify themselves through a series of activities, team-bonding exercises, and therapy sessions. Nonbinary Jordan (Theo Germaine) is the first to see through this off-the-grid camp, but can they uncover Whistler’s sadistic secrets before it’s too late? Oh, and a masked killer is slowly slicing up the camp as well.

For his feature directorial debut, Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Logan comes so close to bringing all the pieces together. Being sent to a conversion camp that almost seems oddly inclusive by the all-smiles “counselors” is frightening all on its own, but Logan’s script never seems fully realized in what it wants to accomplish. The ensemble of characters isn’t exactly small, and while Logan and his actors do handle some of the “camper” moments with surprising tenderness and sensitivity, they feel like superficial bright spots in the grand scheme of things. 

When the angle of gender identity in a slasher-film setting actually gets to be fresh and compelling, sequences involving rifle practice for the young men and the baking of a pie for the young women are both chilling in their own way. Besides the obvious throwbacks to “Friday the 13th,” “Sleepaway Camp” also gets a nod with the “lie” of a transgender camper, who subsequently gets sent to bunk with the boys. It’s not that “They/Them” needed to consistently play into genre expectations, but throwing a masked slasher into the mix just ends up feeling frustratingly tacked-on like an afterthought. The whodunit mystery is too perfunctory to make a true impact, and the obligatory “Talking Killer” reveal forces the actor to go so big and hysterical that the tone almost wobbles over into camp (no pun intended).

Although the script does not always know what to do with everyone, a few actors do break out of their half-formed characters. Theo Germaine has a strong, stoic presence and a no-bullshit disposition as Jordan, and Quei Tann and Austin Crute (2019’s “Booksmart”) both impress as, respectively, trans woman Alexandra and the fabulous Toby. The film’s major highlight is easily a cabin-set a cappella musical number of P!nk’s “Fuckin’ Perfect,” and it’s infectious in a “Glee” sort of way that’s not overproduced but charming in a rough-hewn sort of way. “They/Them” means well, but it’s only A-OK.

Grade: C +

Blumhouse is launching “They/Them” (101 min.) on Peacock on August 5, 2022.

source http://kibsreviews.blogspot.com/2022/08/theythem-works-better-as-gender.html