What movie has a cabin in the woods, sketchy summer camp, counselors having sneaky sex, and a mysterious, masked slasher?

A lot of movies trade on those elements, but in particular, that setup brings the Friday the 13th movies to mind, the first of which provided a young Kevin Bacon with one a prominent acting role early in his career. But Bacon, along with those same tropes, can be found – with a twist – in Blumhouse’s new horror film, They/Them, just released on Peacock.

The twist is that this is no ordinary summer camp for kids whose parents would like a child-free summer. This is a conversion camp for LGBTQ+ kids, and their parents are sending them there in the hopes of having a more “gender-normative” child return to them.

After a cold open kill that won’t make sense until the very end of the movie, a busload of gay, bisexual, transgender and non-binary teens arrive at Camp Whistler, run by Owen Whistler, played by Bacon as an understanding, friendly counselor who claims the goal isn’t to change who they are…unless that is what they want.

But the camp’s motto (“Respect. Renew. Rejoice.”) proves just as hollow as Whistler’s promise, as soon the real agenda of the camp is revealed. There are only binary cabins for the teens, one for boys and one for girls, so the non-binary Jordan (Theo Germaine), who wants to be addressed with they/them pronouns, is slotted into the boys’ sleeping area.

Then counselor Sarah (Hayley Griffith) forces her way into the shower to examine a Black transgender woman, Alexandra (Quei Tann), who’s soon reprimanded for hiding her identity, and also forced to sleep in the boys’ cabin. (There is an element of racism here that is never fully addressed.)

Reinforcing gender norms is part of the program, so that means dividing the campers into “boys” and “girls” and taking the boys to a shooting range while making the girls bake pies (“to serve to the boys”.) Both scenes are fraught with tension after counselor Sarah also hits on camper Kim (Anna Lore) in a scene that is rapey and palpably frightening, considering the carving knife Sarah is casually wielding. And Owen riles up his group with a shooting contest, pitting Jordan against macho-presenting counselor Zane (Boone Platt) and hectoring Toby (Austin Crute) into doing something unspeakably cruel to an animal, all in the name of pseudo-science BS about the male biological imperative.

But the real horror starts after Camper Stu (Cooper Koch) falls for the seductive Gabriel (Darwin del Fabro) and the two have sex. Gabriel is a honey pot – pretending to be a camper while working for the camp to tempt someone into sex. Stu is strapped to a chair, attached to electrodes, then shown images and shocked anytime a picture of an attractive man comes up.

Stu is seriously injured by the “therapy” and ends up in the camp infirmary, attended to by Molly, played by Anna Chlumsky. It’s only then that this film finally goes into slasher mode, where one by one, the evil counselors are picked off. (It’s worth noting that at no time do the teens ever seem to be in danger from the masked slasher – just the people whom the movie has already established as evil.)

As a slasher, the movie offers tepid horror, with very little blood or gore or suspense. Director John Logan, himself an out gay man, does however do a good job of presenting the campers as fully-rounded individuals, who while not fully wanting to be at a conversion camp, still are torn about the way society treats them, wishing they could just blend in to a world that won’t allow them to be their true selves.

One scene involves the campers bonding to P!nk’s “F*cking Perfect”, which the singer allowed the movie to use, and shows the teens having exuberant fun together in a place of safety, where they don’t have to worry about the oppression they typically encounter the outside world. And the movie does have sex scenes, including one between Kim and Veronica (Monique Kim) that while very hot, is less titillating than it is sweetly romantic. And again, veering off from the Friday the 13th formula, no teens are punished for having sex in this movie.

So while the movie offers nothing ground-breaking or even frightening in terms of horror, it’s still worth a watch if only for characters you can root for, and against.

They/Them is streaming now on Peacock.