They/Them

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.

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?)

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.

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.

Oh, dang it. That first two acts were really good. Why did they have to slash all those efforts with THAT finale?

I kept thinking, this would be a perfect double or triple feature with Red State and most definitely, But, I'm a Cheerleader. But, noooo, those are so much better. Watch those if you haven't seen them, or again if you have. This one...eh.

A group of youths attend a gay conversion camp and we get to know pretty much every character well and their struggles. Unfortunately, they're still at a gay conversion camp and yet, things are about to get a lot worse.

Let me backtrack a bit on my opinions above. I LOVED Kevin Bacon in this. In fact, I would go on record saying this is one of his best performances, start to finish. I even loved all the nods to Friday the 13th and some of his other movies I caught. And nicely enough, as much as I loved his acting and choices, this was much like his other movie I love so much, A Few Good Men: there were no bad actors or characters here.

ALL of the cast where great and I truly got invested in each. I was really digging the first and second acts as I got to know each individual, chemistry and charisma.

Also, I'm liking the trend of modern horror as the first half is solid character/story building, making us CARE for the characters. While this one followed that trend, it took it a little too far. This is supposed to be a slasher, but aside from the very few killer scenes sprinkled about, the movie doesn't kick it into high gear until the last 10-15 minutes. The slashing was such an incredibly small part of the first 75 (of 90) minutes, I started to believe it was just added on because Bacon starred in another camp-set, masked-killer film. In fact, by minute 75, I really just wanted to see a much longer movie exploring the villains developed in the first two acts.

And while I can appreciate the heart in the ending, including the monologue, but it just didn't fit. And it all felt so quickly and haphazardly thrown together. Even though there was only one writer, the third act HAD to be someone else's idea.

Sadly, I can't recommend this. If only they slashed the slasher aspects and just kept the heart of the story inside the character's bodies.

***

Final Thoughts: Oh, and I guessed way too easily who the killer was. Just an FYI, despite the grand number of slasher films I've seen and reviewed, I rarely ever guess the killer or ending. Truthfully, I'd rather NOT guess. I love to be surprised. This "twist" was absolutely not a surprise.