Pretending to be Gay in "Head Count"

Head Count (2018) just showed up on my Netflix recommendations, and I had an hour to kill, so:

College student Evan (Isaac Jay) rejects an invitation to go away for the weekend with his friends.  "I sure wish you were going with us," his boyfriend (Jay Lee) says.   But he has something important to do:

A reconciliation visit with his estranged older brother Peyton (Cooper Rowe), who lives in a trailer in the desert.  Eager to put the past behind them, Peyton has a full weekend of reconciliation activities planned, including a hike in Joshua Tree National Park.

"Are you seeing anyone?" Peyton asks, dropping the pronouns in a way that only gay people do.  "You should get out and try to meet someone.  I'm not seeing anyone.  I'm keeping my options open.

"It's not subtext -- Evan is gay!" I exclaimed.  "A gay star of a horror movie!  The final frontier."

On the hike, they run into a group of gay college students smoking weed:  Camille and Zoe snuggling on one side, another lesbian couple, three gay guys snuggling on the other (I'm pretty sure two of them are holding hands). Evan wants to join them, but Peyton is against it -- he hates drugs, and besides -- brother bonding weekend?

Ok, if Evan wants company: "I'll introduce you to my rock-climing buds.  You'll love them."

Luring him away with the promise of hot guys doesn't work, so Peyton allows Evan to go off with the gay college students to the house they rented.

Where they drink, use drugs, and change positions into four hetero couples around a campfire (Apparently Zoe came without a boyfriend just so she could hook up with Evan).

WTF?  I heard that in the old days, gay people often pretended to be straight in public, going out in boy-girl couples, but this is the first time I've heard of straight couples pretending to be gay in public.

I was so upset that I couldn't continue watching.  Apparently the hetero-couples are menaced by a shape-shifting monster, and you see some of Evan's scrawny body.

Why go through all the trouble of pretending that heterosexual Evan is gay? To place the heterosexual college students deliberately in positions suggesting that they are gay couples?

 I researched Isaac Jay; three thousand instagram photos of him kissing, hugging, and gazing longingly at a woman.

And Elle Callahan, my new most-hated director.  This is her directorial debut, except for some film school shorts, but she was an assistant director on 101 Ways to Get Rejected, about heterosexual high school students negotiating mating rituals.