They (also known as Wes Craven Presents: They) is a 2002 American supernatural horror film, directed by Robert Harmon and starring Laura Regan, Ethan Embry, Dagmara Dominczyk, Jay Brazeau, and Marc Blucas. The plot is centered on a group of four adults experiencing night terrors and attempting to deal with the fallout from their prior childhood experiences. The film was produced by Ted Field and Tom Engleman; Wes Craven served as one of its executive producers and was its presenter.
The film was released during the Thanksgiving week and received generally negative reviews, though Laura Regan's performance received significant praise. The film was also a box office bomb, grossing only $16.1 million against its $17 million budget.
Plot[]
In 1983, a young boy named Billy Parks is frightened and has difficulty falling asleep after waking up from a nightmare. His mother Mary assures him the monster he thinks is in the closet is imaginary. As he tries to fall asleep again, a dark apparition emerges from his closet and spirits him away.
In present-day 2002, the plot focuses on a Psychology grad student named Julia Lund and the events that turned her life upside down. As a child, she experienced horrifying night terrors that manifested after witnessing her father commit suicide but has seemingly overcome the problem. She reunites with a childhood friend, a now grown-up Billy. In the diner, Billy is constantly startled by the flickering lights, as he is now deathly afraid of the dark. He tells her that he believes their night terrors are caused by something otherworldly, as he was kidnapped by mysterious creatures as a child and went missing for two days. He warns her to stay out of the dark before shooting himself.
Julia stays over at her paramedic boyfriend Paul Loomis' apartment for comfort and to grieve. Loomis has two roommates whom he is subservient to, paying their portion of the rent and utilities. When he passively asks them to contribute, they mock him, to the point of joking about keeping the money he gave them for the electric bill. The roommates, not him, appear in charge even when one of them sees his girlfriend nude and flirts with her. That night Julia hears the shower running and investigates to find a mysterious black fluid erupting from the sink drain, and the bathroom mirror reveals an opening to alternate dimension filled with mysterious creatures. Paul hears her screams and comes to her aid only to find her alone. He suggests that she might have been sleepwalking, since she does not remember what happened.
At his funeral, Julia consoles Billy's parents and meets up with two of his friends and roommates, Terry Alba and Sam Burnside, who slowly begin to believe his claims, as they also experienced night terrors as children and suspect they are returning. Offended by Sam's careless comments, Julia visits Billy's childhood room and discovers his drawer filled with batteries. Terry shows up and apologizes for Sam's insensitivity and informs her that Billy used to talk a lot about Julia and his experiences with night terrors, and why he was obsessed with staying out of the dark.
As Julia is driving in the middle of nowhere, an unknown creature sprints across the windshield as the SUV engine mysteriously stops. As Julia attempts to restart the SUV, she is startled by a vision of Billy and falls over backwards onto the road only to nearly get hit by an oncoming semi-truck. Julia visits Paul's apartment for comfort only to discover him drunk with his friends Troy and Darren. She leaves in disgust.
At Terry and Sam's apartment, the trio study Billy's diary. Terry and Sam ask Julia if she has experienced any return of the night terrors, which she denies. Terry explains her night terrors started when she was 5 years old, after witnessing her sister drown in a lake where her family would spend their summers. In one instance, she disappeared from her bedroom and returned in the dog house, and as her father reached in to get her, she stabbed him in the eye with a kitchen knife, as she was convinced he was some kind of demon.
Julia is at first skeptical but slowly starts to believe in her friends' stories after meeting a little girl named Sarah, one of Dr. Booth's patients who also suffers from night terrors which started after her mother's untimely death. Sarah claims "They" are going to eat her in her horrible nightmares, and the only thing that keeps them away is lights. She then starts picking at a strange mark on her arm, a similar mark that also appeared on Billy's hand, Sam's shoulder, and Terry's ankle. Terry and Sam are soon taken by the creatures.
Julia finally believes the stories when she discovers the mark left by "Them" on her forehead and pulls out a long black needle. She runs to Paul's apartment in fear. Paul, now convinced that Julia is insane, drugs her drink with a sleeping pill and attempts to call Dr. Booth. Realizing he drugged her, she runs to the subway station to vomit the sleeping pill out, only to get trapped in the station as the closing gates lock her in.
Trapped, she is forced to ride a train home and is the only passenger. The train's lights start to flicker, and the vehicle stops completely. She gets off and sees all the light bulbs burst in the train tunnel before the creatures assault her. Julia manages to escape and is finally discovered by a group of tunnel workers who attempt to help her, only for Julia to violently assault them with shards of glass, convinced they are not human.
She is committed to Dr. Booth's mental institution, where she is attacked once more and transported into the separate dimension she previously saw, only this time inside of a closet. She screams for help to Dr. Booth and an orderly, neither of whom can see or hear her. Dr. Booth closes the door, and the creatures drag Julia away.