Blumhouse
The horror genre is filled with tropes that are designed to creep you out, things that have been used for decades to terrify audiences. The jump scare, the face in the bathroom mirror, the chase scene—need I continue? It would seem that there’s nothing left to scare us, that everything’s been done hundreds of times over. That is, until one film dared to implement the most terrifying thing of all: self-empowerment anthems.
They/Them (or “They Slash Them”) is the new slasher film out Friday on Peacock, billed as “an LGBTQIA+ empowerment tale set in a conversion camp.” It’s trying to bring some originality back to mainstream horror. Aside from a couple of bigger names, like Kevin Bacon, to lend itself credibility and attract a wider audience, it boasts a cast of entirely queer actors, which is a huge step for a film produced by a major studio.
Its conversion camp setting is certainly one that could hold a great amount of horror movie potency; conversion camps are very real, gruesome places where bigoted, ignorant families send children to be mentally and sometimes physically abused until they’re so broken down that they are “turned straight.” To set a slasher here, letting a killer loose on the camp counselors, could be a stroke of genius if done correctly.