writer and director John Logan about the slasher horror film that takes place at a conversion camp. Logan discussed the growing trend of queer horror and what directing your first film is like.
You talked about it being personal and obviously, you spent so much time on film sets. This film comes across as very confident. Why do you think that is? Is it the personal aspect? Is it being familiar with how films are made? What helped you on your debut here? Yeah, it’s a great act of misdirection. The fact that the villain of the piece that Kevin Bacon plays is speaking in very contemporary, woke, new age language about gender issues is very surprising for the characters, and very comforting in a way to throw them off-balance. Because one of the tactics of so-called conversion therapy is to unsettle … to unsettle the principles you’re trying to convert.
I love that song, I love P!nk. I wrote the book to the stage version of Moulin Rouge, where we used P!nk, and so P!nk was in my head a lot. Honestly, I just know how much it would’ve meant to me when I was 10 and in the closet and scared of being gay … what it would’ve meant for someone to say with confidence and power and love “you are effing perfect just the way you are.” So it just seemed [like] the right moment in the story for that.