Movie Review: ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’

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Review by James Lindorf

Jane Schoenbrun’s last film, “I Saw the TV Glow,” generated more critical conversation than most; unfortunately, it only brought in about half of its production budget at the box office. That is probably why A24 passed on her latest project, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” New studio Mubi has been advertising the movie pretty well and is slowly rolling it out from 5 screens to 54, and an estimated 500 the weekend of August 21st. That will make it one of her most accessible films yet, in terms of availability, because she has not traded in her directing style for more screens. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is likely to be the most unique, emotional, and confusing movie many people will see all year.

Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is a filmmaker with a passion project. She wants to reboot Camp Miasma, a seminal horror franchise whose original film served as her queer awakening at age eight. Kris is headed to the snow-covered Pacific Northwest to meet Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the reclusive actress who starred in the original Camp Miasma. The meeting is taking place at the abandoned camp where the movie was filmed, where Billy now lives. What follows is less a by-the-numbers negotiation and more an off-kilter seduction that becomes a reckoning, as Kris’s professional ambitions and long-suppressed desires begin to pull her in different directions.

Camp Miasma is a slasher franchise that combines elements of “Friday the 13th” and “Sleepaway Camp.” Its central figure is Little Death, who comes back for revenge after drowning in the lake, a solid origin for a genre built on a very specific moral economy. The movie titillates with a mix of boobs and blood while the killer dishes out punishment as the enforcer of conservative sexual mores. Sinners are quickly dispatched and the virtuous, typically a young “virginal” woman, are occasionally spared. Schoenbrun takes that framework and inverts it, exploring what it means when the sexual component of those films is not a precursor to death but a path toward something else entirely. It is no coincidence that the slasher shares a name with the French term for orgasm, la petite mort, the little death.

Einbinder is fantastic. This is a long way from “Hacks,” and she handles the demanding role with ease. She brings charm and deep vulnerability to Kris that make her someone you genuinely want to root for even when her judgment is questionable. Anderson is given less to work with but inhabits Billy with an energy that makes every scene with her feel a little silly, eccentric, and slightly dangerous. Their central dynamic, the scene where Kris makes her move and they reach a brief moment of genuine connection before Kris hits a familiar roadblock, is the film at its absolute best. It is beautifully balanced between optimism and heartbreaking surrender, and Schoenbrun’s typically oblique approach to the moment works in its favor rather than against it.

The film earns significant points for style and artistic ambition through its rejection of AI and nearly all things computer-based. It does lose some for a lack of entertainment value when it stops to show what has to be ten minutes of the original Camp Miasma film, including an extended rampage sequence. Unfortunately, this divergence contributes almost nothing to our understanding of either character beyond a brief clip we’ve already seen. Schoenbrun did something similar in “I Saw the TV Glow” by stopping to produce a music video, creating the low point in that film. The impulse to derail her own narrative in service of atmosphere is both a signature and a limitation. This sequence could be forgiven if we ever believed Little Death could have sustained a franchise. He is poorly designed, shot, and choreographed; he would not have inspired board games, video games, and a dozen sequels. He wouldn’t even outrank the Ghoulies in the horror pantheon.

Once back on track, the ending is where Schoenbrun is at her most subversive. If you arrive expecting a traditional horror resolution, you will find it underwhelming and possibly confusing. If you are willing to meet the director where she is, there is more worth sitting with than the surface suggests. There is a moment of possible self-reflection in which Billy questions Kris’s creative instincts. She makes a joke about her making a film from the point of view of the shower curtain in “Psycho.” Much like Schoenbrun’s own meanderings, Kris points out it was only a third of the movie. The conversation sheds light on the gap between how Kris, and perhaps Schoenbrun, see themselves and how the industry does. Even though Kris believes she was chosen as a queer woman to resurrect Camp Miasma, she never wavers in doing the film her way, and I expect the same of Schoenbrun.

This is a movie that would work for fans of Hollywood satire, fans of Schoenbrun’s previous work, and admirers of films that prioritize artistic provocation over conventional satisfaction. Like her other work, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is largely a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. Very few will land in the middle with me, which earns the film a 3.5 out of 5.
Rating: R (Some Language|Gore|Drug Use|Bloody Violence|Graphic Nudity|Sexual Content)

Genre: Horror
Original Language: English
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Producer: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Brad Pitt
Screenwriter: Jane Schoenbrun
Distributor: MUBI
Production Co: Plan B Entertainment, MUBI, Scythia Films