Movie review; They/Them
On July 24th, 2022 Blumhouse Productions released a film titled They/Them, directed by John Logan.
On July 24th, 2022 Blumhouse Productions released a film titled They/Them, directed by John Logan. This movie is a slasher movie based in a conversion camp. The film follows a group of kids varying in gender identities and sexualities as they navigate this conversion camp in which most of them were forced to attend. As far as representation goes, the film has one of the
widest range of people that I have seen in mainstream media. Now, let’s discuss the story.
Warning: there will be spoilers.
The film opens with a kill scene which is pretty basic for a slasher movie so very expected. It gives no clue as to who the victim is or why they are being killed and is actually quite horrifying. The scene then cuts to the introduction scene where we meet the counselors, the kids and the camp background.
The owner of the camp, Owen (portrayed by Kevin Bacon) makes a speech all about how thiscamp is different from other camps. They don’t preach about God, they don’t force you to
change, they just show you another way. Owen immediately separates them between boys and
girls. As the title suggests, there is a nonbinary character who is originally respected and they
get to choose their choice of cabin. Now you may be thinking, that doesn’t sound so bad. It gets
worse.
As to not spoil the whole story, I will give a few of my main points. There is a moment in which the kids start singing Perfect by P!nk. The whole song–for no reason. This was a bit disturbing and generally unnecessary. Later on, there is a very intense intimate scene between two women, then again with two men. These last too long and feel a bit fetishy as they go on but
slasher movies always have nudity, so nothing if not expected. The slasher portion of the movie
only happened for about 30 minutes at the very end so if you are expecting a gory, run-of-the-
mill slasher, look elsewhere.
This movie is not a bad movie, and while the ending was predictable, they did throw in a few twists and turns to catch you off guard. In my opinion, this movie is worth the watch. It is a fun twist on modern terms, has fantastic representation and a really good message. I do wish they named this movie literally anything else. The title They/Them feels like a sort of mockery of those pronouns and while that might have been the point, it was a bit tone deaf on the matter. Overall I’d give this movie a three out of five.
