They/Them (or, as the movie very helpfully insists, They-Slash-Them) is a film that somehow manages to take conversion therapy, queer trauma, Kevin Bacon, slasher tropes, and a masked killer…and still feel like a very long, very awkward corporate diversity workshop with a body count tacked on at the end.
It clearly wants to be important. It wants to be empowering. It wants to be “a statement.” What it is, most of the time, is a confused PowerPoint about queer identity occasionally interrupted by a completely different movie where a masked killer remembers they’re supposed to be in this.
“Inclusive Safe Space” (Terms and Conditions Apply)
We open with a murder—someone driving to Whistler Camp is killed in a pretty standard horror cold open. It’s fine. Functional. Not inspired, but you think, “Okay, maybe we’re in for a sharp little slasher with a satire edge.”
Then morning comes and the real horror begins: dialogue.
A group of LGBTQ+ teens arrive at Whistler Camp, run by Owen Whistler, played by Kevin Bacon with the energy of a man who read “gay conversion camp” and thought, “Yes, but what if I ran it like a TED Talk?” He introduces the place as a “safe, inclusive space” and assures them this is not about changing them.
This is a conversion camp in the same way a shark is a “wet bite enthusiast.”
We meet Jordan, a non-binary camper, who immediately gets told they have to pick a cabin: boys or girls. When they say they’re not comfortable with either, Owen’s grand solution is to… put them with the boys. Inspiring. Revolutionary. Groundbreaking. Truly the ally we all fear.
The movie keeps nudging you in the ribs like, “See? We get gender.” Meanwhile, it can’t even make its own premise coherent: “we’re not doing conversion therapy” in act one becomes “here’s electroshock aversion therapy” by act three.
Representation Without a Plot Is Just Casting
To its credit, the cast is genuinely diverse and queer in ways most slasher movies never attempt. You’ve got trans characters, non-binary characters, gays, lesbians, bi kids. It should be a playground for nuanced dynamics, queer solidarity, disagreements, messy humanity.
Instead, most of them get about as much characterization as a dating app profile you scroll past too quickly. They’re defined by one sentence (“the shy one,” “the slutty one,” “the trans one”) and a single “share circle” monologue… then mostly sidelined until it’s time for a plot convenience.
Alexandra is a trans girl publicly outed and punished by Owen for not disclosing her transness. It’s a horrifying moment that should set the tone for a deeply unsettling exploration of coercion and control. Instead, the movie just kind of… moves on. She gets a few good scenes, then is mostly there to be brave and say affirming things while the script hustles toward its big twists.
Toby is the funny gay one, Kim and Veronica are sapphic tension, Stu is the closeted jock, Gabriel is the suspiciously flirty newcomer. You can see the outlines of real people. The movie just never gives them enough to do other than react to therapy scenes and wait their turn in the moral-of-the-week rotation.
The Horror Part? We’ll Get To It. Eventually. Maybe.
For a slasher, They/Them has a shocking amount of… not slashing. For long stretches, the “masked killer” plotline feels like it’s happening in a different movie, in another building, on a separate streaming service.
We get the odd murder: the cold open, the groundskeeper Balthazar getting killed after spying on the girls’ showers (he deserved worse, frankly), a few later deaths. But instead of building tension through the kills, the movie treats the slasher elements like a side quest. The masked figure just pops up now and then like, “Hey, remember me? I’m the genre you thought you signed up for.”
In between, we’re treated to scenes like:
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Cora, the camp therapist, verbally demolishing the kids in “therapy sessions” that are equal parts abusive and caricature.
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Owen organizing bizarre exercises, like handcuffing teens into pairs and sending them into the woods at night, which seems less like a conversion tactic and more like a deleted scene from a very different kind of movie.
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A full-blown, sparkly, perfectly choreographed dance party to Pink’s “Perfect,” which feels less like character catharsis and more like the movie briefly becoming a queer Glee episode before remembering there’s a killer somewhere.
These bits could work in a sharp horror-comedy or a savage satire. Here, they mostly stack up into tonal whiplash. The film wants to be dead serious about trauma, campy about queer joy, and brutal as a slasher, all at once, but never commits cleanly to any of those modes.
Trauma Tourism Lite™
A lot of the narrative leans on the very real, deeply upsetting horror of conversion therapy. But instead of interrogating it with teeth, They/Them uses it like a set decoration.
We see emotional abuse, shaming, misgendering, outing. We get a gut-wrenching electroshock aversion therapy scene with Stu that could’ve anchored a much darker and more honest movie. Yet the film flits from these horrors to quippy teen banter and random slasher beats like it’s afraid of staying with the discomfort too long.
Jordan, as the central character, is put through the wringer: shamed, threatened, patronized, misgendered. Theo Germaine brings quiet intensity and steel to the role, but the script doesn’t let Jordan drive the plot. They mostly react to things until the third act, when the movie suddenly remembers, “Ah right, final person needs agency, hurry!”
For a film marketed as bold and transgressive, it feels weirdly timid. It gestures at saying something important and then backs away the second it’d get truly messy or confrontational.
The Big Reveal: Scooby-Doo But Make It Trauma
Eventually, the masked killer’s identity is revealed: it’s Molly, the seemingly kind camp nurse, who is actually Angie Phelps, a former camper tortured by Whistler Camp in her youth. She murdered the real Molly and took her place.
Her mission? Kill every adult complicit in running conversion camps, one by one, going full vigilante horror avenger.
On paper, this is actually an interesting idea. A queer survivor hunting down the abusers who tortured kids, sabotaging these institutions from within? There’s a sharp, blood-soaked thriller hiding in that logline.
In this movie, though, the reveal and resolution land with all the force of a wet pamphlet. Once Angie explains her backstory, she becomes less “terrifying avenging angel” and more “slasher with a manifesto.” The film wants you to both understand her and fear her, but doesn’t actually give her the moral complexity or screen time needed.
The showdown culminates in Jordan holding Owen at gunpoint and refusing to shoot him, which gives Angie the chance to kill Owen herself. Then Angie tries to recruit Jordan to her cause. Jordan turns her down, the cops show up, and Angie gets arrested like a very intense PTA mom who took “No more bullying” too literally.
We’re left with the strange moral message:
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Conversion therapy = bad.
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Murdering the people who run it = also bad.
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The correct path is… vibes, I guess. Survival and self-actualization, sure, but with all the depth of a closing monologue in a teen drama.
Bacon, Overcooked
Kevin Bacon is clearly trying. Owen is part charming, part snake, part youth pastor who has several unreported HR violations. But the writing gives him no real journey. He starts as a liar, manipulator, abuser, and ends as… a lying manipulative abuser who gets stabbed.
His whole “I’m actually very chill and affirming, except when I’m psychologically torturing you” routine could have been a terrifying portrait of modern, soft-fascist bigotry. Instead, it’s just inconsistent. Sometimes he’s a nuanced villain, sometimes he’s a cartoon, sometimes he’s just there to deliver the scene’s message.
A Slash of This, A Dash of That, But Not Much Meat
In the end, They/Them is less a horror movie and more a collection of ideas about horror, queerness, and trauma thrown into a bag and shaken until something resembling a script fell out.
It has:
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A killer premise (literally)
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A solid, queer-led cast
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Real-life horror baked into its setting
But it also has:
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Clumsy writing
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Nearly bloodless suspense
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Tonal lurches
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A “twist” that undercuts the slasher angle instead of enriching it
For a movie so proud of pronouncing its title “they-slash-them,” it spends surprisingly little time actually slashing them.Or anyone, really.
If you’re desperate for queer representation in horror, you might find some moments worth clipping out and saving. But as a slasher, as a takedown of conversion camps, and as a piece of storytelling, They/Them mostly feels like a well-intentioned content memo that somehow escaped HR, put on a mask, and forgot why it went into the woods in the first place.
