Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is adoration at the altar of slasher cinema
Courtesy MUBI
There’s a moment in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma that felt like it was targeted at me personally. Filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is sitting with Billy (Gillian Anderson) the former scream queen whose movie—Camp Miasma, the first film in the in-movie franchise of the same name—Kris is remaking. As they watch that original film together, a scene with a split diopter (double focus) shot pops up.
“That’s a split diopter shot,” I said out loud to my cats, who did not care.
“Split diopter,” I heard Kris say a second and a half later out loud, to Billy, who also did not care.
Oh no.
I’d been perceived.
That’s appropriate, as it happens, because Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a movie about feeling seen—as a filmmaker and as a film fan—how it feels to love art, and the many forms that love takes.
Like Schoenbrun’s previous films, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, It’s also a movie about learning to understand yourself through popular culture.
In the world of Schoenbrun’s film, the Camp Miasma franchise and its central monster, the cube-headed Little Death, are as infamous as A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy, Friday the 13th’s Jason or Halloween’s Michael. Like those movies, the franchise started big before eventually experiencing diminished returns. Schoenbrun’s delightfully detailed opening sequence quickly clues us in to the series’ rise and fall, complete with tie-in merchandise, off-brand Party City costumes and eventual straight-to-video humiliation.
Kris, a “Sundance wunderkind” and lifelong Camp Miasma fan, has been hired to resurrect the franchise with a “woke” reboot that fixes the transphobic origin story of Little Death (I Saw the TV Glow’s Jack Haven). Seeking inspiration, Kris tracks down the first film’s star, Anderson’s Billy. Long withdrawn from society, Billy now lives in the filming location from the first movie, where she swans around in Norma Desmond-esque outfits, snacks on Halloween candy and makes Little Death-inspired artwork.
Billy finds Kris’ fascination with the Camp Miasma movies too academic—it’s just flesh and fluids, after all, what’s the fuss? Kris, who credits the first film with helping her come out as a queer woman, finds Billy a fascinating enigma. As the pair draw closer, the line between fiction and reality blurs. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma becomes part Sunset Boulevard, part The Final Girls and part Mulholland Drive as Kris and Billy discuss the themes of the original film, the role of horror movies in their lives and, eventually, their own desires and sexual hangups.
Courtesy MUBI
Like Mulholland Drive (Schoenbrun casts Patrick Fischler in a featured role to make that connection obvious) the logic of what’s on screen doesn’t matter as much as how it makes you feel, and the feelings Schoenbrun evokes are deep and simultaneous. A murder spree scored by a melancholy needle drop is both hysterically over-the-top and movingly empathetic toward Little Death themself. The matte painting backdrops surrounding Billy’s summer camp home are jarringly obvious, but also dreamy and beautiful. The events may be fictional and the sets may be artificial, but the emotions—desire, heartbreak, loneliness and exhaustion from carrying all of the above—are very real.
Schoenbrun’s films are about the experience of being shaped by popular culture, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is their most personal and expansive work yet. If you instinctively call out filmmaking techniques during a movie, this movie sees you. If you wish the know-it-all next to you would shut up and just have fun, this movie sees you. If you’re a queer person who found early (if imperfect) representation in Sleepaway Camp’s Angela Baker, this movie sees you and is here to hold you in a loving embrace.
Beyond its strangeness, industry satire and trope-skewering, love and acceptance are what Schoenbrun wants you to walk away with. Above all else, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a funny, bloody, powerful and perfect love letter to horror movies and the weirdos who love them with their whole being. That love—gooey, sincere, all-consuming—is likely to leave you in an unexpected puddle when the final credits roll.
