On the surface, writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s first three features circulate around the era-specific screens in which characters lose themselves and find their way back out, transformed. We’re All Going To The World’s Fair‘s centerpoint is a computer monitor anchored in the nascent 2000s Internet days of fanfiction and forums, where I Saw The TV Glow involves its protagonist’s connection with a half-remembered 1990s television show. Schoenbrun’s latest effort, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, reckons with the sempiternal effect the slasher genre — specifically entries from the 1980s — had on the silver screen and the future storytellers sitting in front of it. Upon the success of their Sundance smash in 2021, Schoenbrun was offered to reboot the Leprechaun horror franchise and, like Charlie Kaufman with Adaptation., writing about the experience yielded a richer result than just sticking to the script.
Set to a cloudy cover of “Nightswimming”, the sublimely ornate opening credits of Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma depict the rise and fall of the titular, Friday The 13th-mirroring slasher series. Looking for fresh blood, the studio behind the Camp Miasma property hires queer filmmaker Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) to paper over the problematic past attached to the franchise. To clarify her complicated feelings about the project, she journeys far up the west coast to meet with Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who portrayed the final girl in the inaugural Camp Miasma movie. It turns out Presley actually lives in isolation on the snowbound campgrounds where the films were shot and carries psychic wounds from her time embodying the character. As the two spend more time on the premises of the haunted Camp Trivoli, the worlds of the real and the cinematic intermingle.
As much as Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is playing in the sandbox of the slasher milieu, the fundamentals of its story call back to darkly funny and mysterious film noir tales going back decades before the horror subgenre was birthed. Specifically, the film points to Sunset Boulevard as an inextricable influence, even being overtly referenced in dialogue a few times before Kris meets Billy at the otherworldly camp. Sure enough, Billy’s entrance near a flickering projector is worthy of a classic femme fatale, with her hat brim pulled down low and her breathy Southern drawl trickling out slow. As the two watch the Camp Miasma movie in which Billy starred, she even sports Norma Desmond’s signature jeweled headwrap and seems to stop just short of saying, “I am big; it’s the sequels that got small.” Gillian Anderson does a outstanding job of giving her former screen star an outsized off-kilter presence while also grounding her in warmth and woundedness.
Schoenbrun’s first two movies were emotionally heavy affairs and while there’s, of course, nothing wrong with that, I appreciated the sense of play they brought to this new project. Scream has long been thought of as the standard-bearer when it comes to satire in horror but now on its seventh entry, it’s satisfying seeing Schoenbrun take swipes at the machine tasked with scaring up dollars at the box office. When Kris chats with her agent, played by Sarah Sherman, she’s literally displayed in her phone as “Your Agent”, just as Kris is labeled “Your Client” in hers, a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the industry’s transience. While Kris is thrilled calling to say she wants Billy to be the lead in her project, the agent is careful to manage expectations, walking through a racquetball area with the phrase “THIS IS YOUR PLACE” plastered on the wall.
But Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is mostly a love letter to, more than a deconstruction of, the slasher classics that clearly had a strong impression on Jane Schoenbrun in their youth. Kris and Billy represent two camps when it comes to approaching these films, with Kris intellectualizing the images to death and Billy absorbing them on an ephemeral level. For every Kris in the audience, pointing out split-diopter shots and poorly-aged cultural depictions, there’s a Billy whose jaw is on the floor at the sensuous power movies can have. As someone who routinely analyzes film — I’m doing it right now as I’m typing this — I found freedom in embracing the complicated and messy feelings Schoenbrun has about this corner of cinema.
Score – 4.5/5
New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Coyote Vs. Acme, starring Will Forte and Lana Condor, is a live-action/animation hybrid following the efforts of Wile E. Coyote as he enlists a billboard attorney to sue the Acme Corporation for repeatedly selling him alleged faulty products.
The Dog Stars, starring Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin, is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film set after a virus wipes out humanity where a former civilian pilot and a hardened Marine team up against roaming scavengers and hold onto the possibility of a better future.
Idiots, starring Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr., is a crime comedy following two down-and-out drivers as they transport a wealthy teen to rehab, but their simple job spirals into a chaotic journey of drugs, danger, and crime as their passenger derails their plans.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup