The Cast of They/Them Pick Their Favorite Slasher Masks

Released on Peacock today, the new film They/Them (pronounced with the punctuation, so, They-Slash-Them) has some fun with modern conventions while also making sure to check some of the boxes that horror and slasher fans expect. Set at an LGBTQIA+ conversion camp, the film follows several queer and trans campers for a week of programming intended to “help them find a new sense of freedom.” Naturally, as camp-themed slasher movies go, a masked killer begins to pick people off one by one. That in mind, it got us wondering what the cast of the film thinks is the best creepy mask in slasher movie history. Here’s what they told us:

• Carrie Preston: “Halloween though, Come on. It just terrifies me.”
• Austin Crute: “The Purge for me. I feel like if The Purge is actually happening and somebody showed up to my house with that mask, It would not be right. It would not be well, take what you need.”
• Anna Lore: “Black Phone The Black Phone. I feel like for that movie, like that fact that the mask changes the expression changes, that mask is terrifying.”
• Darwin del Fabro: “I go for the classic, I go Friday the 13th. That mask is just so classic.”
• Monique Kim: “I think the Scream mask is a little goofy, but something about the simplicity of it just like rubs me the wrong way.“

Writer/director John Logan had a bigger answer too, offering insight into how the film designed its own mask but also how they landed on that by considering the entire genre around them. 

“First of all you look at every mask that has ever been designed for every slasher movie since the beginning of slasher movies and think find things you like things you respond to things you don’t respond to,” Logan revealed. “You know, I’m very fond of the Jason Vorhees hockey mask for all the obvious reasons because that to me is the foundational text of slasher movies. But for our slasher we wanted to do something more bespoke because we’re in the woods. We wanted to feel very woodsy and also our killer has really two sides to their personality. So the mask reflects one side that’s sort of calm and one side that’s very sort of angry and aggressive and I worked really closely with Tony, Tony Gardner our brilliant mask designer and Tony just came up with some great studies for it.”  

They/Them is now streaming on Peacock.