The cast of ‘They/Them’ sounds off on why queer people love horror so much
We sat down with the cast of the new conversion camp slasher They/Them, which is out today, with one essential question on the docket: Why do so many queer people have an affinity for horror as a genre?After all, horror has often not been kind to the queer community.Think Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, a trans woman serial killing cis women and wearing their skin.
This was many people’s first look at a trans character on screen, and what an unfortunate introduction it was.“In the past, queerness has been built up to be a horror,” explains They/Them EP Scott Turner Schofield. “There’s this idea that there’s something so scary, especially about trans people, that for 60 years we’ve been [portrayed as] serial killers.”Thanks to general conventions like the queer-coding of villains and the “bury your gays” trope, many in the community were originally distrustful of a slasher set in a place with so many vulnerable queer characters.“When we put the release out, there were a lot of LGBTQ folks who were like, ‘I don’t know about this,’ and I knew that they were just coming from where they’ve been set up to be by this genre,” Schofield recalls.He emphasizes that the delight lies in the defiance of that expectation, saying, “it’s going to feel amazing to see what can happen when it comes from a queer point of view.”Related: WATCH: Closeted ‘Psycho’ star Anthony Perkins’ son spills the tea in new queer horror docAustin Crute (“Toby”) argues that it’s these harmful tropes that have actually inadvertently drawn the queer community towards the darker side of media.“Even beyond horror, you see a lot of the feminine characters being evil villains,” he says. “Dracula, Scar, Jafar, these characters that are considered straight;.
