They/Them (2022)
[4]
A group of LGBTQ teens are dropped off for a week-long stay at a conversion therapy camp where a masked slasher is on the loose. Before the body count begins, the program leader (Footloose‘s Kevin Bacon) promises no holy-rolling hijinks and declares that God loves all the campers just as they are, no matter how straight or gay they are. Without the expected shame and repentance, the kids pair up and begin bonding with one another. But by the mid-point of writer/director John Logan’s (Star Trek: Nemesis, The Aviator) screenplay, a trans boy (Theo Germaine) discovers the camp’s eventual plans for the kids — involving psychological and physical torture — and plans to evacuate everyone under the cover of night. That’s when the mysterious masked killer shows up. But why is he/she/they only killing the camp leaders, not the kids?
They/Them is cursed with being both derivative and dated by its overt political correctness. As a piece of slasher genre fare, it fails to deliver any memorable thrills, chills, or visceral spills (at all). It doesn’t even muster any atmosphere. As an LGBTQ drama, everything feels too token and calculated to feel genuine or moving. It conjures a few scenes that may resonate with viewers, including one where Carrie Preston as the camp therapist cruelly tears Germaine down in a private session. She tells him he tries to be special to win his parents’ approval, even though he’ll never be man or woman enough to make them proud. The film’s better moments are like this one — when it reveals the teen characters’ insecurities. Another script component worthy of mention is that some of the camp leaders turn out to be self-loathing gays themselves, supporting the popular (and well documented) notion that the LGBTQ community’s greatest adversaries are often its own closeted members.
Despite the lackluster script and directing, the acting is competent throughout — though few characters get a chance to leave much of an impression. Theo Germaine has some good moments as the would-be main protagonist, but he’s robbed of agency at critical points in the narrative. Anna Chlumsky (My Girl) does her best as the camp’s sympathetic nurse, while Darwin del Fabro is creepy as an effeminate turncoat. Cooper Koch (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Swallowed) bears the brunt of the film’s physical torture when he’s forced to endure electro-shock treatment — a real life horror of these conversion camps. I’ll also give the film credit for obscuring the identity of its killer until the big reveal. That moment is followed, unfortunately, by a terrible, gutless, embarrassingly bad ending designed to make sure no one leaves this movie happy with what they just watched.