Jane Schoenbrun comes to filmmaking from the perspective of a fan. The same was said about the generation of filmmakers who came of age in the early 1970s, when directors like George Lucas and Brian De Palma, armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of old movies gathered mostly from watching TV, were making films that self-consciously mirrored earlier works. For these film brats, there was no difference between high-class pictures and trash cinema. It all went into the same mental melting pot.
But Schoenbrun is a different kind of fan, one forged by late-night posts on internet forums and the ubiquity of streaming. Their three feature films, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, I Saw the TV Glow, and now Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, are all about the shifting line between fantasy and reality, filtered through Schoenbrun’s identity as a trans woman.
Of the three, Camp Miasma is the most overtly autobiographical. Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a young filmmaker who was just hired by a major studio to write and direct an “elevated — you know, woke” reboot of a late-1970s horror film called Camp Miasma. It’s a classic slasher flick in the mold of Friday the 13th, where a summer camp full of counselors who love sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll are stalked by a masked serial killer. In this case, the serial killer is Little Death (Jack Haven), who wears a hazmat suit with a square institutional air vent as headgear. Every good slasher villain worth his salt needs a signature weapon; Little Death’s is a spear, all the better to emphasize the penetrative nature of the sexualized violence endemic to the genre.
Camp Miasma was a big hit in the horror-mad VHS era, so naturally it got a slew of sequels. Schoenbrun deftly uses the opening credits montage to tell the story of the franchise’s increasingly ridiculous attempts to stay relevant, punctuated by fun details like a cash-in CD called The Little Death Raps! and a Party City knockoff costume called “Vent Face.”
But Kris isn’t as interested in Little Death as she is the final girl. Ever since Jamie Lee Curtis survived Halloween, genre conventions stipulate that everyone in the movie must die except one resourceful co-ed, who delivers a gruesome comeuppance to the killer. In the original Camp Miasma, that was Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson). Kris becomes obsessed with Billy’s performance, but when she tracks her down to set up a meeting, she finds the former movie star is living in a cabin at the camp where the original film was made. In fact, the entire town seems to be a tribute to the films, as Kris discovers when the clerk at her hotel is the actor who played the doomed sheriff in the original film — who is, in turn, played by comedy legend Kevin McDonald.
Anderson understood Schoenbrun’s assignment and played it to the hilt. My reaction when Billy first speaks went something like this: “That’s a good Southern accent. She sounds like she’s from Tennessee. OMG, Gillian Anderson is doing a Dolly Parton impression!”
Over KFC, Kris immediately opens up to Billy about her filmic obsessions, the unique problems posed by her polyamorous lifestyle when “sex doesn’t come easy,” and her ultra-processed food habit. Billy is coy, saying only that she stays at the camp amid the artifacts of her more glamorous past because somebody has to be there when Little Death comes back. When Billy shows Kris her print of the original film, Schoenbrun gets a chance to flex their horror chops as Little Death cuts a bloody swath through the camp while young Billy (Amanda Fix) loses her virginity to a sleazy counselor (Arthur Conti).
Kris and Billy’s twisted affair is like Sleepaway Camp meets Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. When they say that Gen Z is obsessed with gender but squicked out by actual sex, this is what they’re talking about. At times, Camp Miasma comes across as both a horror film and an essay about horror films. Schoenbrun keeps things from getting too academic with a self-deprecating sense of humor and some genuinely gorgeous photography. And blood. Don’t forget the blood. Lots of blood. I’m not sure any other director in the world could have pulled off the delicate balance of splatter and self-awareness that makes Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma work, because I’m not sure anyone else shares the same matrix of technical skill, obsessions, and hang-ups that make Schoenbrun such a unique talent.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
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