FILM
THEY/THEM Debuts on Peacock John Logan previews his highly anticipated queer psychological thriller.
JOSH STRINGER/BLUMHOUSE
By ZACH McKENZIE
THEY/THEM features an LGBTQ cast playing all of the film’s queer characters
W
hen a group of queer youth arrive at Whistler Camp, a secluded conversion-therapy site tucked deep in the woods, it’s quickly revealed to be hell on Earth—in more ways than one. In addition to the horrendous treatment they experience at the hands of their counselors (including actors Kevin Bacon and Anna Chlumsky), they’re also faced with a masked murderer who picks people off, one by one. Award-winning screenwriter John Logan (whose screenplays include The Aviator, Gladiator, and Skyfall) makes his directorial debut with a new take on the horror genre. The psychological thriller THEY/THEM (pronounced They Slash Them) will premiere exclusively on Peacock
on Friday, August 5. Logan sat down with OutSmart to chat about his film. The original setting for THEY/THEM was not a conversion camp, Logan explains. “It started with wanting to write something about horror and gender. Horror cinema has a really complicated relationship with gender and sexual identification. When I was growing up, queer characters mostly didn’t exist on screen. If they were in horror movies, they were victims, jokes, or killers, but they were never the hero. There was never a queer character you rooted for.” Longing for the film he wished he’d had as a kid, Logan put pen to paper. “When COVID happened, every writer I know (including myself) suddenly had a chance to write something for ourselves, from the heart. I had met some kids who had gone through conversion therapy in the past, and their stories about what that experience was like
really stayed with me. It seemed very natural to me to write a movie where the greatest horror isn’t necessarily the masked killer, but what’s going on in the conversion camp.” In addition to writing the film, Logan directs and executive-produces THEY/THEM, steering the ship as he taps into his favorite film genre. “I could have written a very serious indie movie on this subject, but I’m a popular writer. That’s what I do,” he adds. “I want to write for (and appeal to) audiences, and I love horror movies. I take every trope of the slasher movie—from it being set in a camp in the dark woods to having a killer with the mask—and use all of those parts and subvert it in an interesting way to tell a story that is about queer empowerment in, of all things, a slasher movie!” Authenticity is the name of the game for Logan, as THEY/THEM features an LGBTQ cast depicting all of the queer characters ➝ OutSmartMagazine.com |
AUGUST 2022
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