“The time for queer horror is now!”

This statement, courtesy of director Sam Wineman way back in 2017 has become a personal motto for me and a kind of rallying cry among LGBTQ+ people this year. Truthfully, the fact that a number of great queer movies have either come out over the last few years or are coming out soon makes me deliriously happy. Representation, both in front of and behind the camera, is so important.

It’s also something that Blumhouse Productions seems to understand and has put to good use in their Hulu series Into the Dark. Just over the last year, we’ve seen stunning works from under-represented voices, from female writers and directors like Sophia Takal and Chelsea Stardust to giving Latina filmmaker Gigi Saul Guerrero her first feature length debut. And now we have “Midnight Kiss,” a slasher that hails from a gay writer Erlingur Thoroddsen and a gay director Carter Smith, and starring a number of LGBTQ+ actors.

What a time to be alive.

It begins in 2013 as a New Year’s Eve countdown takes us through the years of a small group of friends until we reach 2019. In typical slasher cold open style, we meet Ryan (Will Westwater) and his ass as he tries on a variety of shorts for his trip. He finds a note slipped under his door that reads “never forget me,” but he tosses it aside as he goes to shower. Moments later, his sliding door opens and a darkly dressed, masked intruder enters. He pulls back the shower curtains, slashes the twunk’s throat and dashes him in confetti glitter as he films Ryan’s dying breath.

Disposable victim aside, we’re quickly introduced to our main characters. There’s photographer Cam (Augustus Prew) and his bestie Hannah (Ayden Mayeri). Cam isn’t excited about the weekend’s plans. But it’s tradition to go to Joel (Scott Evans)’s opulent home for the New Year’s Eve celebration. This time, though Joel has a surprise. He and his recent boo Logan (Lukas Gage) are engaged. Rounding out the group is Zachary (Chester Lockhart), the glam goddess who knows she as pretty as she a diva.

New guy Logan discovers just how incestuous the group is when he learns that Zach and Cam hooked up...until Zachary came out and realized he was too pretty for Cam. Hanna, meanwhile, fucked Ryan (the twunk from the cold open)...and then he fucked everyone else. Then there’s Cam and Joel...their history is complicated and filled with a lot of heartache. It’s the main reason Cam isn’t thrilled about the upcoming weekend.

It’s also the reason why the group created a silly game called The Midnight Kiss.

The rules are simple:

It has to be one guy who’s a stranger
It has to be consensual (like, duh)
After you get your kiss, you can decide to let the guy go or keep them until sunup. No strings.

Unfortunately, the killer from the cold open has targeted the group and, like poor deceased Ryan, sent messages to them. And before the night ends, there will be hell to pay.

I’d just like to say how refreshing this episode was. It’s gay, gay, gay on a level you rarely get to see in a mainstream series or movie. It goes back to representation because it’s obvious that the creators understood the gay experience of living in 2019. From the apps that new guy Logan calls, “the sluttiest game of musical chairs” to the killer, for instance, who is dressed in a leather pup play mask used in a lot of submissive kink scenarios. This killer pup mixes sensuality with violence, particularly in one gruesome act of forced bottle fellatio.

But it’s not just surface level stuff. Erlingur’s script examines the emblematic trend of hook-up culture in the gay community at large. It’s no surprise that this group of friends are so nonchalant about hooking up with each other and it’s never truly discussed in a shamey way. But it is tied directly to the story, both in terms of characters and their relationship to each other, but also to the themes of the movie. Gay culture is also critiqued with the addition of Hannah, the lone woman and fruit fly of the group. She very pointedly calls out the fact that she’s always dragged to gay clubs where she plays second fiddle and ends up going home alone. She’s tired of being the wingwoman and, at one point, tells Cam that he, “can be selfish as fuck.”

The weakest part of “Midnight Kiss,” unfortunately, is the mystery. It feels very by-the-books in terms of who and why. I clocked the killer early on and while it does its best to throw red herrings, it never was enough to surprise me. That said, there’s something kind of novel in the way it feels completely by-the-numbers in terms of the slasher whodunnit.

The slasher is one of my favorite subgenres because I grew up on the Freddys and Jasons of the 80s. In the decades since, LGBTQ+ people have been force-fed a steady diet of straight men and women heroes. Straight slashers full of straight people doing straight things. Where the only time LGBTQ+ people are referenced, it’s typically in the sacrificial teen role as “bitchy best friend,” who’s there to look fabulous and offer catty one-lines. Or we’re evoked in an expletive in a major studio release.

So the fact we have a typical, by the books slasher that is like an explosion of gayness is so incredibly refreshing and satisfying. I think back at how much I would have loved to have seen something like “Midnight Kiss” growing up. So here’s to you, Carter Smith, Erlingur Thoroddsen and your fabulous cast. As we enter a new decade of horror with a horror episode full of gay men being gay, enjoying life and existing for something other than a plot device. A queer horror movie from arguably the biggest horror production company operating today as part of a mainstream horror series on a popular streaming service...I raise my glass.

The time for queer horror is now, indeed.