They/​Them

It’s the quin­tes­sen­tial hor­ror image: the morn­ing after arriv­ing at sum­mer camp, a young woman (Quei Tann) wakes up ear­ly to sneak out of the girls’ cab­in and take a show­er. She thinks she’s alone, bask­ing in this rare moment of pri­va­cy to wash her hair and body. The music grows sin­is­ter. The cam­era strad­dles the line between exam­in­ing and leer­ing at her naked body. Play­ing off the iconog­ra­phy of clas­sic slash­ers like Fri­day the 13^th and Sleep­away Camp, we sus­pect we are being impli­cat­ed in the voyeuris­tic gaze of a sadis­tic killer.

When the woman turns around, she gasps, but it is not a slash­er she sees. It’s a camp coun­selor, and by this point we’re acute­ly aware that this is worse than if it were a killer. The woman, we dis­cov­er, has been hid­ing the fact that she’s trans­gen­der, and the coun­selors – who spe­cial­ize in gay con­ver­sion – see this as a sub­terfuge. As pun­ish­ment, she is forced to rid her­self of her fem­i­nine clothes and stay in the boys’ cab­in as she’s denied her female hor­mone med­ica­tion and forced to detransition.

This scene is the strongest in John Logan’s new slash­er They/​Them, not only because I, as a fel­low trans woman of col­or, rec­og­nize the hor­ror in Tann’s predica­ment, but because it’s the only one that effec­tive­ly sub­verts its hor­ror arti­fice and enmesh­es it in the very real hor­rors of LGBT con­ver­sion prac­tices. It’s proof that there’s a ker­nel of a great idea in Logan’s premise, and it makes it all the more dis­ap­point­ing as he squan­ders that poten­tial for the rest of the run­time. They/​Them is a queer slash­er with­out bite, blood, or scares; and in its aim to cre­ate a pos­i­tive, empow­er­ing por­trait of queer youth that flips the script on rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the genre, the film winds up belit­tling the very foun­da­tions of queer rebel­lion it so des­per­ate­ly wants to celebrate.

The fric­tion between the two gen­res Logan is play­ing with is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent. They/​Them most­ly for­gets it’s sup­posed to be a slash­er, main­ly oper­at­ing as a limp com­ing-of-age dram­e­dy that makes one almost yearn for the oper­at­ic, mean tone of ear­ly Ryan Mur­phy. Logan – an oth­er­wise tal­ent­ed screen­writer who’s writ­ten two excel­lent Scors­ese films – has not tran­si­tioned well into direct­ing, flat­ly shoot­ing this beau­ti­ful cast of queers and fail­ing to instill dread or atmos­phere. By the time the movie briefly remem­bers to be a slash­er, the film­mak­ing comes off as oblig­a­tory. Logan’s no stranger to hor­ror, hav­ing co-writ­ten the bleak­ly riv­et­ing Alien Covenant, but based off They/​Them, you’d be excused for think­ing he held noth­ing but con­tempt and dis­missal for the genre.

There’s still a nov­el­ty to see­ing this very vis­i­bly queer cast head­line a hor­ror film like this, but Logan mis­takes that nov­el­ty for impor­tance, neglect­ing to put this appeal­ing set of actors in a movie worth see­ing. Logan’s script is less con­cerned with deliv­er­ing scares than it is cre­at­ing a GLAAD Media Award high­light reel. So afraid is Logan of falling into stereo­types or ​“bury­ing gays” that every char­ac­ter is a Strong Queer Lead, a Bea­con of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, a Divine Madon­na that is not allowed to die or have their pret­ty lit­tle skin touched. Logan doesn’t see hor­ror as an effec­tive con­duit of express­ing queer pain and trau­ma, but rather as some­thing to out­smart and overcome.

Scenes depict­ing dai­ly life at the con­ver­sion camp don’t fare much bet­ter. Most of the teens are giv­en lit­tle to do besides Theo Ger­maine as non-bina­ry teen Jor­dan, who has a con­fi­dent, assur­ing pres­ence that unfor­tu­nate­ly doesn’t trans­late when the film asks them to be the emo­tion­al cen­ter of the group. Kevin Bacon effec­tive­ly deploys his mag­net­ic star pow­er to lull us and his cast into believ­ing he’s the ​“cool” coun­selor that has no prob­lem with gay peo­ple. He under­stands the del­i­cate bal­ance of faux con­cern and banal evil that real gay con­ver­sion pro­fes­sion­als use every day. His work makes the rest of the adult cast look worse by com­par­i­son, as they slip into car­i­ca­tures of homo­pho­bia and trans­pho­bia that betray their sin­is­ter nuances and mutations.

There is very real vio­lence, both phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal, that is con­jured from the image of the con­ver­sion camp in the queer com­mu­ni­ty. Many queer film clas­sics have already reck­oned with this vio­lence effec­tive­ly, from But I’m a Cheer­leader to The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post. Hor­ror should be the per­fect out­let to reflect not only on the trau­ma forced onto us by the con­ver­sion camp, but our rage, our anger, our desire to turn their blood­let­ting back on those that would deny us our human­i­ty. These are real emo­tions. Messy and unsa­vory ones, yes, but that’s what horror’s for. To chan­nel our basest, dark­est urges and give us release, recog­ni­tion, and catharsis.

They/​Them spits in the very face of cathar­sis, cul­mi­nat­ing in a cli­max that equiv­o­cates homo­pho­bic vio­lence toward queers with queer vio­lence toward homo­phobes. It evokes Emer­ald Fennel’s words on her film Promis­ing Young Woman, that anger and vio­lence are inher­ent­ly mas­cu­line actions that serve no place in a film about fem­i­nin­i­ty. Like the film or not, that kind of gen­der essen­tial­ism only pro­motes the very het­ero and cis­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty that encour­ages queer­pho­bic violence.

Logan’s film is worse. Where Fen­nel at least mess­i­ly reck­ons with an indi­vid­ual trau­ma that there is no right or wrong response to, They/​Them takes a very clear stance: that vio­lent queer rebel­lion is just as hor­ri­fy­ing and wrong as the tor­ture of queer youth — an almost com­i­cal mis­read­ing of this cur­rent moment of increased Amer­i­can and British back­lash toward LGBT peo­ple of every stripe.

We can be angry, but we can’t fight back. We can mourn, but we can’t show our­selves dying. We can be heroes, but only sym­bol­i­cal­ly. We can make our own hor­ror movies, but they can’t be scary. In that sense, it would be unfair to say that They/​Them is about the inhu­man­i­ty of gay con­ver­sion. It’s about the inhu­man­i­ty of doing any­thing at all. And I don’t know which is more frightening.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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