[Pride 2021] The Disappointing Queer Representation of The Pale Door

Horror has, since its inception, toyed with questions about race, sexuality, and gender. A horror film filled with toxic masculinity with a sensitive gay final boy makes complete sense in that regard. Doubly so if the film deals with Old West gender politics, as The Pale Door does (or at least attempts to). What is so frustrating, then, is that this film spends so much time contrasting our queer lead Jake (Devin Druid) with his straight male friends only to have him sacrifice himself for one of them. On the one hand, sure, I buy one brother exchanging his life for another. On the other hand, horror (and media as a whole) has a real problem with burying its gays…and, in this case, tries to avoid it by handing the character his own shovel.

For clarification, I have no problem with gay characters meeting terrible fates. The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2014) has a great sequence where two young queer boys are brutally murdered. Wrong Turn (2021) made its gay characters the worst, so I was actively cheering when one of them gets (spoilers for the pretty great Wrong Turn reboot) crushed by a log. The 5th episode of Hulu’s Monsterland deals with queer longing after death in a very fascinating way. It is not like queer death cannot be done to my tastes—I hope that much is clear—but what The Pale Door thinks it’s doing and what it’s actually doing are two conflicting things, and it makes all the difference.

Jake, the central character of The Pale Door, is a character I like a lot. Devin Druid does a very nice job in the role, and I see some of my own experience in his efforts to fit in with his more traditionally masculine friends. He is the only character that sees the witches as people; he is also the only character not trying to sleep with them. Conversely, Jake is the only member of the gang the witches have any real interest in. Pretty early on, it is established that Jake has never killed, and has never been with a woman (in the biblical sense). The head witch, Maria (Melora Walters), explains that this makes him “innocent blood” that will sustain them for many years. It’s an interesting conflict to spark in him, and Jake’s empathy for the witches adds some much welcome nuance into it, but his final decision makes his whole story feel flat. There was no dynamism with Jake. He remained passive and good and not much more.

It needs to be noted that Jake’s empathy for the witches’ plight is admirable and understandable, and the flashback to Maria being burned alive while pregnant is suitably horrifying. The “why” of his sacrifice is incredibly endearing to me, someone who enjoys a genuinely good character here and there. It’s just the sacrifice part of it. When we still consider movies like Freaky groundbreaking for having two men kiss and a gay best friend to a cishet white girl that lives to the end, it begs the question do we need one of the only final boys in the genre to sacrifice himself so his straight brother gets to live and maybe learn something?

Let us examine the reasons we don’t need this.

The most glaring is that in any situation where the character is the only representation in a given work, it sucks that they’re specifically chosen to be killed off. Jake doesn’t get even a passing reference to a love interest, so our sole queer boy is lost (the movie also does this to Black and Native characters). Good, nonviolent people needlessly dying so morally ambiguous characters can mature is not a new trope in storytelling, and there isn’t a ton of interesting ground to cover there. Queer characters don’t need to exist to give their shitty straight brothers a second chance. Jake seeing the best in people is great but said brother Duncan (Zachary Knighton) should earn his second chance on his own merits. A more interesting movie would do that, rather than kill off its, again, sole queer character.

On the other hand, I do believe artists should tell whatever stories they want. Artists, particularly those shaping the stories, work so hard and their choices have rhyme and reason, even if I find them personally unsatisfying. Also, queer characters and stories shouldn’t have to have rhyme or reason. Jake sort of exists in this category, where his sexuality is an important plot point, but it affects his interactions with other characters minimally, if at all, and is brought up in dialogue only once. It is undeniably cool that a gay kid gets to just exist in an old west film, even if his gayness is not really part of his existence outside of backstory.

More horror movies should do this (although take a lesson from Pooka Lives and do not make them cops). I love that our final boy is sensitive- I think that is an important trait for a final boy to have. And when I think about my own sibling (my little sister Mary), I cannot deny that my gut feeling is that I would absolutely sacrifice myself to be slowly eaten by these witches so she could escape. A noble queer character is certainly not a bad thing, but why most this nobleness come with a death sentence?

The truth is I don’t have a perfect answer to the question of if we “need” this type of story, and I don’t think one exists. I’d like to see queer characters get all kinds of endings- tragic, bittersweet, cathartic, being the best friend who survives, and sure, some where they sacrifice themselves for shitty straight characters, just because they’re good. But if options D and E are the only option studios and filmmakers are interested in exploring, horror will betray its roots as a queer and constantly evolving genre. Here’s to hoping the 2020’s allow us to actually flip the formulas on their head, instead of just promising that while still offering the same straight, white, cisgender endings we have gotten.

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