Kevin Bacon is back to the horror-slasher subgenre, that provided him with his first prominent starring role: Friday the 13th (1980). He is the biggest attraction in They/Them (2022), an LGBTQIA+ empowerment tale set at a gay conversion camp.
The movie centers on a group of LGBTQ+ campers arriving at Whistler Camp – a conversion camp run by Owen Whistler (Kevin Bacon) – they are promised a “new sense of freedom” by the end of the week. But as the counselors attempt to psychologically break down each of the campers, a mysterious killer starts claiming victims, and they must reclaim their power if they’re going to survive the horrors of the camp.
This is the debut feature film as a director of John Logan, also the writer and producer, an Academy Awards nominated for the screenplays for Hugo (2011), The Aviator (2004), and Gladiator (2000), also the writer of the action and horror titles Tornado! (1996), Bats (1999), The Time Machine (2002), Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alien: Covenant (2017), and the James Bond movies Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015).
Alongside Kevin Bacon, Carrie Preston, Anna Chlumsky, Theo Germaine, Quei Tann, Anna Lore, Monique Kim, Darwin del Fabro, Cooper Koch, and Austin Crute also star.
The director of the film John Logan has stated “They/Them (2022) has been germinating within me my whole life. I’ve loved horror movies for as long as I can remember, I think because monsters represent ‘the other’ and as a gay kid, I felt a powerful sense of kinship with those characters who were different, outlawed, or forbidden. […] I wanted to make a movie that celebrates queerness, with characters that I never saw when I was growing up. When people walk away from the movie, I hope they’re going to remember the incredible love that these kids have for each other and how that love needs to be protected and celebrated”.
This Blumhouse Productions feature had its world premiere at the LGBTQ-oriented nonprofit festival Outfest Los Angeles. It is scheduled for a digital release on Peacock on August 5, 2022.
Watch here the official trailer for They/Them (2022).
