Director and writer John Logan helms They/Them a new slasher movie on Peacock. They/Them follows a group of queer youth who are sent to a conversion therapy camp by their parents. This group includes actors Austin Crute, Theo Germaine, Quei Tann, Monique Kim, Darwin del Fabro, Anna Lore, and Cooper Koch. Overseeing them all is a sinister group of camp staff played by Kevin Bacon, Carrie Preston, Anna Chlumsky, and more.
Exploring the real-life horrors of conversion therapy, They/Them puts a twist on the genre by riffing on the horror classic Friday the 13th. When things start to decline at the camp, the group of campers must band together to remain alive as people are being off one by one.
Screen Rant sat down with Logan to discuss They/Them, including the film’s horrors both real and fiction, and the long legacy of slashers that have influenced it.
Warning: This interview contains minor SPOILERS for They/Them.
Screen Rant: They/Them had a slow buildup to the slasher elements. Were you trying to show the horrors of the conversion camp and the real-life parallels before diving into that?
John Logan: I think it’s good dramatic structure to build your horror or build your suspense as you go. The thing that’s so unique about this so-called conversion therapy, is that yes, on one hand, it’s physically traumatic. There are forced marches and sleep deprivation. But there’s also psychological gamesmanship that’s going on that’s very insidious. I wanted to really take the time to show how these characters, our antagonists or villains, gradually tried to chip away at the identity of our campers.
These conversion camps are, unfortunately, a very real thing so the choice to set this movie here feels both fitting and like it could be a bit divisive. Can you talk a little bit about how this story came to you?
John Logan: It’s been brewing me for a long time because when I was a kid, the only queer characters in movies or in horror movies, were victims or jokes or mostly nonexistent. And that always bothered me. And as you know, horror films have a very complicated relationship with gender and with sexual preference.
I wanted to write something exactly about that, that dealt directly with gender and horror. I chose the slasher movie genre, the most reviled of all horror movie genres, because I love it and thought it was exciting, and it seemed to make sense to me. I wanted to write a movie where the queer characters were the heroes, the movie that, when I was 14, I wish this movie has existed. I wish I could have looked at a bunch of queer characters who say, “I am gloriously who I am,” and are heroes because of it.
Bringing Kevin on to the movie was such a great parallel. I was talking to him about Friday the 13th a bit. Did you write this role with him in mind?
John Logan: It really didn’t have to do with Friday the 13th; it had to do with Kevin’s body of work. When I started writing, and I normally don’t write with actors in mind, Kevin just kept coming into my mind – his voice, his personality because Kevin has that magical ability to go from utterly charming to completely icy scary on a dime. And that’s what the character has to do. So I just couldn’t get Kevin out of my heart when I was writing it and thank goodness he agreed. The fact that he was in the original Friday 13th movie is like the cherry on the sundae as far as I’m concerned.
We can stay away from spoilers but I was curious, was the killer always who you intended it to be?
John Logan: The killer was always the killer, and the killer’s motivation was all the same along the way working on the script. Obviously, different sorts of suspense sequences came up, and different ways to tease the audience in terms of who the killer might be. So, it became a sort of a mosaic of complicated clues and false clues and red herrings along the way, but the actual identity and motivation of the killer was there right from the beginning.
They/Them Synopsis
A group of teenagers at an LGBTQ+ conversion camp endures unsettling psychological techniques while being stalked by a mysterious masked killer.
Check out our other interview with They/Them stars Kevin Bacon & Carrie Preston as well.
They/Them is currently streaming on Peacock.
