New Horror Film Has Teens Attempting To Survive A Gay Conversion Camp
Topics: Film and TV, LGBTQ
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Peacock
Topics: Film and TV, LGBTQ
They/Them is an upcoming horror film starring Kevin Bacon that centres on a group of teens attempting to survive a gay conversion camp.
It's the latest horror movie from the production company behind the likes of Get Out, The Purge and Halloween.
Blumhouse has a long track record of filling cinema seats with fans of horror movies, this time they'll be hoping for subscribers to NBC's streaming service Peacock.
A group of teens heading out to a camp where the film's resident serial killer can pick them off one by one like after dinner mints is nothing new.
However, now our young protagonists will have to survive gay conversion therapy attempts during their daytimes, with Bacon's character Owen Whistler running the show.
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According to Empire, Bacon's camp leader will take the kids through 'a week of programming' that grows increasingly 'psychologically unsettling' in method.
Then, of course, a serial killer shows up and starts offing members of the cast, forcing the kids to work together in order to survive both the camp's disturbing intentions and the killer on the loose.
The horror movie setting of a remote camp shouldn't be too unfamiliar for Bacon, as one of his early roles saw him running around Camp Crystal Lake trying to dodge slasher villain Jason Vorhees in Friday the 13th.
Bacon's character Jack bites it relatively early in the film after committing the cardinal sin of horror movies by having sex, getting an arrow through his neck for his trouble.
The film has been written and directed by John Logan, who has penned screenplays for the likes of Bond movie Skyfall, Gladiator and The Aviator.
An experienced and renowned writer, it will be his first time in the director's chair, while star actor Bacon is counted among the executive producers.
Logan told Empire the idea for They/Them had been 'germinating within me my whole life' due to his love of horror movies and his own experiences growing up as a gay kid.
He said he wanted to make a movie of his own that 'celebrates queerness' and features 'characters that I never saw when I was growing up'.
The writer and director hopes audiences will come away from They/Them with an understanding that the love people have for each other 'needs to be protected and celebrated'.
Gay conversion therapy for minors is banned in some parts of the US, though large swathes of the country have no such restrictions on trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of children.
They/Them will be releasing on streaming service Peacock on 5 August.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the LGBT Foundation on 0345 3 30 30 30, 10am–6pm Monday to Friday, or email [email protected]