Wes Smoot 7/30/22 Wes Smoot 7/30/22

FILM REVIEW: Will THEY/THEM make you a convert?

By Arnold Wayne Jones

THEY/THEM -- Pictured: (l-r) Cooper Koch as Stu, Anna Lore as Kim, Monique Kim as Veronica, Quei Tann as Alexandra, Austin Crute as Toby, Darwin del Fabro as Gabriel, Theo Germaine as Jordan -- (Photo by: Josh Stringer/Blumhouse)

The genius of Jordan Peele’s Get Out was his brilliant conceit to disguise a social satire about race behind the genre of a horror film. Peele set up his audience to expect racism, then masked it with a facade of woke tolerance, where gaslighting rises to the level of psychological torture. Of course, the pitfall of that idea is, it is lightning in a bottle: Once you figure it out as an artist, the audience figures it out, too, and it’s hard to revisit that trough again. (Once The Sixth Sense gave us its twist, could anyone ever do “he was dead all along” and not come off as derivative?)

They/Them has to confront a similar anxiety of influence: It’s basically the queer version of Get Out, and once I tell you that, can you really be surprised?

THEY/THEM -- Pictured: (l-r) Theo Germaine as Jordan, Austin Crute as Toby -- (Photo by: Josh Stringer/Blumhouse)

On the surface, at least, it does a pretty good job of creating that off-balance atmosphere: A busload of queer teens of all identities reluctantly arrive at Camp Whistler, what purposes to be a “gay conversion” camp – a phrase so full of repugnance it’s difficult to imagine anyone except the most extreme of homophobes being comfortable saying those words. The camp’s owner is Owen, played by the appropriately reptilian Kevin Bacon, an actor who effortlessly can seem creepy, menacing and friendly almost entirely by the context you put him in. Owen’s welcome speech makes it sound like this is not a conversion camp at all, but a journey of self-discovery: He’s tolerant of the trans-identifying Jordan (Theo Germaine), he avoids bible-thumping and constant indoctrination, he seems kinda hip. It throws off the campers, some of whom want to be there for their own sakes, not their parents.

THEY/THEM -- Pictured: (l-r) Carrie Preston as Cora Whistler, Anna Chlumsky as Molly, Boone Platt as Zane, Kevin Bacon as Owen Whistler -- (Photo by: Josh Stringer/Blumhouse)

But the reality is very different, and underneath we see the hypocrisy and the tension. We know something is afoot; you can’t have seen a horror movie, especially one set at a summer camp, and not be attuned to the tropes of the suspicious handyman, the strange shapes and sounds in the dark, the vulnerability of the shower cabin…. Not to mention the seemingly unrelated but bloody murder in the opening scene. Writer-director John Logan hits these touchstones like a batter hitting each bag as he’s rounding the bases, which is what you want in a genre film, but maybe not so much in a revolutionary issue drama where tropes become cliches. Logan is one of the most respected screenwriters in Hollywood (Gladiator, Hugo, The Aviator) but this is his debut as a director, and his inexperience shows. The performances are perfunctory and the visual adequate and underlit. The film gets stuck in the Sunken Place and struggles to get out to assert an identity of its own.

THEY/THEM -- They/Them Premiere Event on July 27, 2022, at Studio 525 in New York City -- Pictured: Theo Germaine -- (Photo by: Astrid Stawiarz/Peacock)

But is it fair to compare – or at least, as long as you can enjoy a film on its own, does it matter that it doesn’t rise to the level of a genre-defining modern classic? Well, sorta. The similarities are so obvious (a lead character named Jordan? Peele’s last film was Us and now we have They/Them?) it seems to invite comparisons. Do I respect applying the thoughtfulness of Get Out to a gay theme? Sure, despite how humorless and preachy it gets by the end. But as a slasher film, They/Them is clunky and uninspired. I wouldn’t check into this camp.

THEY/THEM -- They/Them Premiere Event on July 27, 2022, at Studio 525 in New York City -- Pictured: (l-r) Matt Strauss, Chairman Direct-to-Consumer & International; Jason Blum, CEO Blumhouse; Quei Tann, John Logan, Writer/Director/EP; Darwin Del Fabro, Anna Lore, Kevin Bacon, Cooper Koch, Theo Germaine, Hayley Griffith, Monique Kim, Austin Crute -- (Photo by: Astrid Stawiarz/Peacock)

They/Them premieres Aug 5 on Peacock.

Wes Smoot 6/23/22 Wes Smoot 6/23/22

PEACOCK RELEASES NEW TEASER FOR ORIGINAL FILM THEY/THEM

Peacock releases new trailer for They/Them (or more appropriately They Slash Them) by award-winning screenwriter John Logan’s in his directorial debut from Blumhouse. They/Them will premiere exclusively on Peacock Friday, August 5, 2022.

This slasher horror film stars Kevin Bacon as Owen Whistler, the creepy owner and director of Whistler Camp, a conversion therapy retreat for LGBTQIA+ youth. This week of programming promises to offer guests the opportunity to “help them find a new sense of freedom”, but as the camp’s methods become increasingly more psychologically unsettling, the campers must work together to protect themselves. Audiences can expect thrills and chills from this queer-horror slasher flick as things go from bad to worse when an unidentified axe murderer starts claiming victims.

They/Them also stars Anna Chlumsky, Carrie Preston, Theo Germaine, Quei Tann, Austin Crute, Monique Kim, Anna Lore, Cooper Koch, & Darwin Del Fabro.

Wes Smoot 6/10/22 Wes Smoot 6/10/22

Peacock Reboots a Gay Staple with Unexpected Success QUEER AF

By Arnold Wayne Jones

If you’re old enough (and gay enough) to remember watching when Russell T. Davies’ original British series Queer as Folk debuted more than 20 years ago – I, sadly, am – then you will never forget the adrenaline-rush of seeing sexually-active gay men engaged in realistic-seeming sex without AIDS, shame or suicide being the dramatic driving force. It was staggering in its radicalism. There was no marriage equality; it was still GLBT – the “A” hadn’t been added, the letters reversed, the Q codified. It was sexy, frivolous, and its politics was that of stentorian outrage at closet-cases, homophobia and hypocrisy. The original QAF – and its American remake, which ran on pay-cable for five seasons – was a kind of fantasy soap opera of bed-hopping, shade-throwing and melodramatic cliffhangers. (Question: Should we call a gay soap opera a “lube musical”? But I digress.)

We live in a new world now, although not always a better world. Gay weddings are now called “weddings,” Grindr gets joked about in primetime, COVID has replaced HIV as the virus of the moment, trans kids are… well, a thing. But there’s also the Pulse nightclub shooting, anti-trans legislation and the current SCOTUS membership. We’ve come far, but there’s still far to go.

Which is why, as I discovered slightly to my surprise, that we really needed a reboot of Queer as Folk. I needed convincing; I’m generally opposed to rehashing old properties simply because Hollywood is so bereft of courage or originality that it assumes audiences only want what they already know. (Unfortunately, they are often right.) Why revisit the same characters, or “new” characters regurgitating the same ideas, just for clicks and a 4.5 in the demo? The fact that this QAF was coming to NBC’s Peacock – the buggiest and boringest of the major streaming services from the most middle-brow of networks – gave me little hope.

Then I watched the first episode. And the second. And third. And it dawned on me that, of all retro series reboots out there, this may be the one that has the best chance to seem more relevant than the original.

In some ways, this is a critique of the American version. A dirty little secret: Most gays will concede that we often hate-watched that show. We wanted to see idealized versions of our own lives on screen (hard bodies glistening with perspiration in soft-core lighting), but these scenes were sandwiched between stereotypes, often painfully overwrought dialogue and predictable plotting. Most episodes left you with the same dissatisfaction as a Diet Coke: You asked for it, but the empty aftertaste left you wanting something better. The Peacock version needed to improve upon those feelings, and so far, it has.

The first amazement for me was the opening scene: A fairly explicit and rolicking anal sex scene that shows more ass and abs than I expected from NBC. The second amazement: Diversity. Another reason why the earlier incarnation was so disappointing was the total lack of color in the primary cast: Of the dozen or so regulars, every single one was as white as a Trump rally. There were token lesbians, a mix of tops and bottoms, twinks and doms but virtually no bears, no queens, and no POC. Not so this time out. The lesbian couple are mixed race – a butch black dyke and a thin lipstick transwoman; the local slut is mixed, the adopted son of white parents (including an almost unrecognizable Kim Cattrall, doing excellent character work) with a brother on the spectrum (Special star Ryan O’Connell); there are Latinos, gender-fluid teens, otters, a disabled guy and Juliette Lewis. (Sadly, no senior queers – hey, it’s still a gay fantasy.)

Another big difference is how the stakes seem contemporary and relevant. There’s less worrying about HIV (PrEP!) and molly overdoses and more mass shootings, social media awareness and criticism of faux allies. But there are still the cliches: Young gays having/wanting kids (heteronormative ideals are the flesh-eating viruses of most mainstream portrayals of gay culture); superficial conversations about overwrought emotions; secondary characters praising/apologizing for the anti-heroic stars; and so, so many pretty boys fucking wildly to fill in for plot (OK, I admit I like that part a lot). The trade off works, though.

I’ve enjoyed the acting (other than O’Connell, who is sweet but never convincing in his line delivery) and the mancandy helps the bad dialogue go down easier. I’ll definitely watch all eight episodes and probably wait for another season. And maybe two decades from now, another version will come along and rewrite the gay script over again for a future generation. And maybe it will be Queer AF too.