Hello, muddah. Hello, faddah. Here we are at Kevin Bacon’s weirdo conversion camp for LGBTQIA+ teens. Formerly the playground of neo-conservative ideas and reductive sexual anxieties, the campground slasher movie is getting a modern makeover courtesy of Blumhouse, which loves nothing more than to hide a satirical backbone to their horror offerings. Picking up where the Friday The 13th series left off, They/Them, cleverly pronounced “they slash them,” is giving you yet another reason to avoid, um, conversion therapy? As if anyone needs another reason.
And who better to welcome the campers to their new safe space than Camp Crystal Lake alum Kevin Bacon, who received an arrow through the neck during his summer vacation in 1980. They/Them also features another teen actor who made her bones on the magic of summer: Anna Chlumsky, who, of course, had the worst summer anyone could imagine in My Girl. Let’s hope none of these kids are allergic to bees.
Here’s the synopsis:
Kevin Bacon plays Owen Whistler in this slasher horror film set at an LGBTQIA+ conversion camp. Several queer and trans campers join Whistler for a week of programming intended to “help them find a new sense of freedom”. As the camp’s methods become increasingly more psychologically unsettling, the campers must work together to protect themselves. When a mysterious killer starts claiming victims, things get even more dangerous.
So it turns out that instead of trying to do the impossible, like torturing someone until they’re not gay anymore, the camp plans on just killing the campers. Sure, that sounds all well and good to the horny counselors looking to get and give a stiff rogering before school starts, but what of the permission slips the campers’ parents signed? Is death by masked killer covered? Think of the legal headaches, please.
They/Them hits Peacock on August 5.