Julia Lund (Laura Regan), a psychology student, is called to meet a childhood friend at night. He tells her that monsters from their childhood, that come out of the darkness, are coming for him, and then kills himself. Billy had night terrors as a child, as did Julia and two of Billy’s friends. She begins to suspect that “They” are real and coming for her.
They grabbed me with its first scene of childhood fear. It was a bit long, didn’t lead to much, but was well done with some creeps below the surface. And, with less intensity, that’s what I felt about the rest of the film. The monsters, CGI creations, pop up only for seconds in dimly lit rooms or nighttime roads. That’s good for suspense, but bad for thrills, so there better be a lot of suspense. Well, there’s some, and it’s well done, with some creeps…ummm… Just go back and read my second sentence.
Laura Regan and the rest of the cast look good and give personality to their characters. Regan has a future in horror films as she can pull off intelligent, strong, and scared out of her wits all at once. A bit more of that fear, and a bit less of the psychology discussions or endless doubts about her sanity would have helped.
There was so much potential here, but I was left feeling that none of it mattered. Things happen (and looked good), and then the credits ran. Perhaps with a bit more buildup for the ending it might have been memorable.
Now, dear readers, I want to talk to you about sexuality and nudity. These are good thing all by themselves but serve an additional purpose in horror and thrillers. In these films, viewers needs to have their blood racing and their adrenaline flowing. What’s fun is that if you get a person excited in one manner, it transfers over to others. Thus, a bit of nudity can get the viewer breathing hard so that sudden murder is that much more intense. With that in mind, They offers up Julia in a bath and getting out of bed naked after sex. The problem is the camera is aimed to show nothing. No flesh, no titillation, no excitement. Fine. There are other ways to get excitement. But then why were these scenes in the film? What is the point? Did director Robert Harmon have some extra film in a camera and realize the movie was too short? Worse, there is a scene of a girl taking a shower in her bathing suit. There’s two ways to go with that—show her naked in the shower, or don’t have a shower scene. We all know that girls bathe from time to time so it’s not necessary for character development.
The film is alternately titled Wes Craven Presents They. This is a marketing ploy as Craven had nothing to do with this film (well, he might have watched it and I’m sure he got a few bucks for his name). So, the studio/producers think their potential audience is so stupid that sticking an unconnected horror icon’s name on a film will cause the fools to come running. Since “presented by” or something similar is popping up on more and more films, my question is, are they right?