They/Them: O Acampamento

First of all: I'm gay myself and I'm a horror and slasher fan.

The first minutes of the movie were pretty good and gave me big hopes that the rest of the movie was going to be the same.

Well, it wasn't.

The movie wasn't even horror or a slasher, because there was absolutely no tension, and the murderer was after nobody I would really care for. The whole movie just felt like a personal revenge killing spree that was only made to attract and feed a Gen Z they/them audience. I just kept guessing who the murderer was, but even that wasn't really hard if you could count to 3.

On top of the boring story, almost nobody of the main characters was likeable and the main protagonist Theo Germaine had the expressional acting bandwidth of a rock. The character development and their background stories were so shallow that it rather felt like a camp of deaf-mutes. There was almost zero dialogue that would reveal anything meaningful about the characters.

Sadly, neither Kevin Bacon nor Carrie Preston (known from True Blood) were able to save the movie from the poor script. Please try again and get better writers because this was thumbs down deluxe.

As a gay man and a lover of horror, this movie was... unsuccessful. On multiple fronts. It was almost insulting the low amount of effort put into the story and how uninspired it was.

Let's start at the beginning of the rainbow with the obvious fact that this is exploiting the LGBTQIA+ community in the most *gay eye roll* exhausted, heteronormative-perspective type of way. The nonbinary one, the sassy AA one, the jock, the popular girl, the masc girl... just riddled with tired tropes and clichés. I mean, really, there was a dang musical number and a bad one at that. I'm not even offended, it's just like, try harder lol

Moving onto the next color, the acting. We don't need to harp on this, but it was bad. All around. Not even my man Kevin could save this one (who I love and the only person who did a good job). A smorgasbord of stilted and overacted performances.

As far as the plot goes, this is where we get to the heart of minimal effort and uninspired clichés. This was not scary, it was not thrilling, it was barely engaging and it was most certainly predictable.

I am never overwhelmingly negative with my reviews but I am struggling to retrieve any redeeming qualities with this one. If you are going to perpetuate stereotypes, at least entertain me while doing so. I don't think I have to reiterate this, but I would not recommend this one.

(Also my first review got deleted cause it got too many likes, sorry your movie is bad?)

The idea behind this movie is very much "But I'm a Cheerleader" mixed with an attempted "Scream" movie in the woods. A lot of typical tropes are used throughout, and it only gets interesting towards the end. Predictability is a killer for slasher movies (pun intended). The side stories with the campers throughout kept it interesting, but it's easy to guess the ending(s) before you're halfway through.

They/Them is a dissatisfying slasher that has interesting ideas, and a decent first half. But quickly divulges into a dull and uninspired slasher.

Starting off with the good, Kevin Bacon and Theo Germaine are very good with the material their given. Theo Germaine especially is a standout as this actor gives some surprising depth to their character. Speaking of depth all of these young kids actually have some character scenes that feel real. There's quite a bit of great emotional scenes between these characters which really made the film more grounded. And the first half of this film was actually somewhat decent. The physiological horror is actually done pretty well.

However despite some good ideas and good character moments, this film is a tonal mess from the last 30 minutes. The pacing is way too slow, in fact it's not really even a slasher for about 75 minutes. The movie builds to really nothing. It almost makes the slasher part of the film feel unnecessary, and almost a completely different film than the first half. The kills are very dull and uninventive, there's no creativity here. There's no tension or even any chase scenes. The movie falls back on a lot of horror clichés, and it made the final act very boring and disappointing. There's also some really bad editing in the final 20 minutes that make some scenes involving a certain character and the killer make no sense. And finally the killer was blatantly obvious. It's a terrible twist that you can see coming a mile away and really it makes you look back and see that none of our protagonist were in actual danger with the killer

Overall They/Them has an interesting premise, but doesn't do anything with that premise and offers no thrills, no blood, awful motivation, and a lack of scares.

My biggest problem with this movie is with how it was sold to me: A horror flick based at a Christian conversion camp. There was a couple of plot "twists" that weren't really twists, mainly because one of them made zero sense at all, and the other was completely predictable. I'm sure most reviewers will complain it was too progressive, but that didn't really bother me once I accepted what it wasn't: a horror movie. Once I got past that, then it was easy to be annoyed with what I was tricked by the trailer into watching: A crappy teen drama that was SUPER heavy-handed in character development and very little else. If I didn't know any better, I'd guess this was a pilot for a new teen drama about LGBTQ kids united by trauma at a Christian conversion camp on Peacock. They wouldn't even have to change the title.