Horrifying camping: Shady Grove and They / Them
THIS ARTICLE HAS SPOILERS
A vacation turned into a nightmare is something we see frequently in movies and TV. In productions that range from horror – like the 1984 season of “American Horror Story” – to comedy – like the anthology series “The White Lotus”, now on its second season – we can always find people who only wanted to relax and ended up having a hard time. Going camping is one of the most common activities for those willing to go out in the nature and relax, but quickly the paradise can become a nightmare. There are many horror movies set in campsites, and here we analyze two slashers from 2022 with this setting.
Shady Grove
The couple Shaina (Niki McElroy, who also served as screenwriter and producer) and Mark (Todd Anthony) and their friend Eli (Juhahn Jones) leave a music festival and go directly to the cabin they rented to spend a few quiet days. The cabin is in the middle of the woods, near a lake, and Shaina, who is pregnant, is extra sensitive to all the weird smells, noises and movements inside and outside the cabin. She is right about worrying, after all – something they don’t know about-, there is a dangerous murder around: a person wearing a deer skin and hairpiece.
There is a problem in the main couple’s relationship. Shaina had been seen kissing a girl, something that almost erased her relationship with Mark. When Mark calls Shaina a lesbian, she protests, saying that “this is not fair”. Nothing else comes from that situation and that small argument, and it could have been better used as a plot point.
The “final girl” is the female character who ends up being the only survival ou at least the last victim in a horror movie. Shaina is this final girl since the beginning, as she is the only girl in the trio – until another girl appears, the friend of a clerk Eli had met in the local market. Mark doesn’t believe in the things Shaina says but has to trust her when he’s intoxicated and a whole group of masked people invade the cabin. More than the fina girl, Shaina is the lead, and everything wraps around her.
The masked people turn out to be women who want Shaina for their twisted sisterhood. The original synopsis says that “SHADY GROVE is a fictional story that incorporates the role of women in Greek mythology and sets them in our current and controversial Roe vs. Wade world.”. It’s all a lie… sort of. The most powerful being in the Greek mythology was indeed a goddess – it wasn’t Zeus, Disney’s “Hercules” lied to you: it was Gaia, the Goddess of the Earth. This reflection about Greek mythology is nowhere to be found on the film, only in the press materials – something the average moviegoer doesn’t have access to.
The great mistake here is to show matriarchal societies as communities where no men are allowed, and even the baby boys who are born need to be discarded. It’s a portrayal that does much more harm than good to feminism as a whole. If “matriarchy” is so bad for men, “patriarchy” is also awful for women: this is the idea that such a speech reinforces, putting feminism as something that hates, castrates and destroys men – which is far from the truth.
They / Them
A bus arrives bringing the new campers to Camp Whistler. It’s not any kind of camp: it’s a “gay cure” camp. The owner’s speech, however, is pro-diversity: Owen (Kevin Bacon) says that they want to help the campers find a heteronormative way of life that feels authentic to them, but if they’re still LGBTQIA+ by the end of the week, it’s OK. It’ll be a week during which campers won’t be able to communicate with the world outside Camp Whistler, so you already know that something bad will happen.
Amid the common campsite activities, weird outdoor chores and incredibly unhelpful therapy sessions, the campers develop a rapport – something that doesn’t happen in “Shady Grove”, as the characters already knew each other – and deaths don’t start to happen until almost half the movie has passed.
The curious thing here is that the serial killer on the loose only kills the employees of the camp. After all, what is really the most horrific thing going on: the presence of a serial killer or the existence of conversion and aversion therapies the employees submit the poor campers to? I think the answer here is obvious. And it’s so obvious that the deaths aren’t scary: they even become satisfying.
At first, we think that, instead of a “final girl”, we’ll have a final trans non-binary person: Jordan (Theo Germaine), who seems to be the de facto lead of the movie. Later, we think that the “final girl” could be the employee Molly (Anna Chlumsky), who looks like a person in the process of absorbing how problematic what is going on in the camp is. But, in the end, there is no “final girl”: an atypical choice for an atypical horror movie.
Both movies seem to be trying to pass a message – something that sometimes happens in horror cinema. Even though the thinking often happens after – not during – the projection, both movies do little to encourage the thinking about the women’s place in society and the horrors of conversion therapy – OK, maybe “They / Them” encourages debates more than “Shady Grove” does. Two below-average movies that almost fail to spark a conversation: like going camping in a weird-looking area, these movies are among things to be avoided.
