Horror has always been queer. Since the early cinematic days of filmmaker James Whale, an openly gay man who crafted such queer classics as The Old Dark House (1932) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), horror has always been about society othering the LGBTQ+ community. Queer people have often been relegated to being monsters and strange creations attacking heteronormativity. In recent years, however, queer filmmakers have reclaimed their stories and delivered many of their own (e.g., I Saw the TV Glow, The Serpent’s Skin, and Death Drop Gorgeous). We can now add Kyra Gardner’s Slay, out of FrightFest, to the bulging queer box for its delightful trans representation and redefinition of the Final Girl archetype. It’s a campy, weird, and bloody slasher that scratches that itch.
Harmony (Reise Alexander) and Chloe (Zoey Luna) live fearlessly and unapologetically as trans women. Early on, they appear on a popular talk show, hosted by Jenna Woolf (Shawnee Smith), who grills them about what it means to be trans. Jenna maliciously discusses a previous anti-trans guest and grills Harmony about her experiences. She digs her claws into Harmony, hoping to get a soundbite to blast online for bigoted incels. Visibly anxious, Harmony exhaustively soldiers through the barbaric line of questioning. The scene operates as an examination of both journalistic corruption and alt-right politics creeping into the media landscape. It’s a foundational moment that informs much of the rest of the film, but Gardner neither uses the trans identity as a plot device nor exploits one’s misery for monetary gain. Chloe and Harmony exist as living, breathing human beings.
Over spring break, Chloe and her friends head out to a secluded cabin in the woods to decompress and recharge. But a masked killer crashes the party, stalking and slaughtering their victims with thirsty eyes and a carefully sharpened knife. The maniac’s murderous mask captures a woman’s right to plotting deadly wrongs, with a perfectly beautiful face and flowing blonde locks. On a story created by Luna and Catherine Clark, Gardner morphs the material into a polished, slender slasher with red-lipsticked bite. Chloe grew up on social media, her mother creating an account when she was a child, and she nurtured her adoring fans into a lucrative business model. She’s willing to do literally anything for the camera. Her fixation for online validation may not be able to help her as the killer inches closer and threatens to destroy everything she’s built.
Kyra Gardner masterfully creates a queer slasher that’s equally cozy and fun. Queer audiences deserve a modern-set slasher drenched in the touch and feel of vintage slashers without the, you know, “burying the gays” trope. There is nothing quite like the slasher boom of the 1980s, but Gardner discards the past for something far more progressive and frighteningly earnest.
Slay (not to be confused with Jem Garrard’s 2024 vampire flick of the same name) reconfigures what we’ve come to expect from a slasher through a dazzling queer lens. The indie film joins the ranks of Summoning Sylvia, Queens of the Dead, and I Don’t Understand You as essential modern queer horror films that don’t shy away from getting vicious. Amidst social and political turmoil, particularly in the United States, art continues to be a cathartic valve to alleviate the built-up stress and anxieties permeating the queer community. Here’s the catch, though: let’s take all that rage and, well, punch Nazis while we’re at it.
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