Kevin Bacon said the premise of his new movie “They/Them” about a gay “conversion” camp is just as terrifying as the gory slashings onscreen.
“This is a scary movie,” Bacon told Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” Wednesday. “It’s a movie set in a gay conversion camp and that’s probably the scariest thing about it. All of these young people come to this camp, and they have either been forced to be there or they’ve decided to bring themselves there.”
“The horror is that I think that I can try to make them be something that they’re not,” continued Bacon, who portrays the homophobic camp director. “And it’s all wrapped up in a really fun slasher movie.”
The movie’s title alludes to the modern expansion of nonheteronormative gender pronouns and is cleverly pronounced “they slash them.” Campers are hacked to bits by a mysterious killer after enduring debunked efforts to rewire their sexual orientations.
“And you know your slasher movies,” said Fallon. “You were in the first ‘Friday the 13th.’”
“I was in the very first ‘Friday the 13th,’” said Bacon. “At camp! So this is my return to camp and axes and blood and all that kind of stuff.”
Bacon also returned to another of his classics with a clip showing him performing the “Footloose” TikTok challenge alongside his wife Kyra Sedgwick. The footage shows them recreating the movie’s dance moves at home, which Bacon admitted was daunting.
“I looked at this thing and it looked hard,” said Bacon of the challenge.
“And everyone that’s doing it is about 25. I just didn’t think that she would be up for being dropped, basically,” he said of his wife. “I was gonna do it with a stuffed animal or with one of our goats or something like that, but see, I would’ve gotten in trouble for that.”
Bacon, who formed The Bacon Brothers band with his sibling Michael in the 1990s, also performed a rendition of Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels” with Fallon. The actor then teased what “City on a Hill” fans can expect from the upcoming third season.
“He’s left the FBI, Jackie Rohr, and got kicked out and threw his badge in the Boston Harbor at the end of last season,” said Bacon. “And now he’s basically sitting on the couch and watching cartoons and drinking beer. And his wife’s like, ‘I gotta get you out of the house.’”
“So he gets a gig working private security and things go south pretty quickly.”
“They/Them” premieres on Aug. 5 on Peacock.