“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” Review

Expanding on themes explored in their previous film, “I Saw the TV Glow,” writer-director Jane Schoenbrun returns with the beautiful and ambitious “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” a genre-defying work that functions both as a love letter to slasher cinema and all those who use the genre as a safety blanket and as a frank exploration of sexuality, gender and art’s ability to help us make sense of ourselves.

Jane Schoenbrun establishes the world and characters in a wonderful opening montage set to Okay Kaya’s cover of Radiohead’s “Nightswimming”, as we view newspaper clippings and artifacts capturing the legacy of the fictional “Camp Miasma” slasher franchise, a fusion of “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Sleepaway Camp.” After the cultural phenomenon of the original “Camp Miasma”, the leading actress, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), turns down offers to return for the sequels, which grow increasingly absurd in their premises and increasingly hated by critics and audiences alike. The montage ends with a final announcement that the franchise is being rebooted, with Sundance darling Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) tasked with breathing new life into the stale, problematic IP.

Drawn by her own fandom as well as a deep desire to break new ground, Kris travels out to the Pacific Northwest to meet with the reclusive Billy and understand why she quit acting and if there is any chance of her returning for the new installment.

Director Jane Schoenbrun is one of the most dynamic, exciting directors working today, marrying confident and distinct style with poignant themes about identity, loneliness and how those uncomfortable in their own skin latch on to art and fandom as a shortcut to understanding. Schoenbrun exhibits a fluency in the visual language and rhythms of slasher movies while elevating the material into something more stylistically ambitious and avant-garde.

All the while, Schoenbrun deftly handles two distinct movies without ever feeling disjointed, as we watch Kris’s journey to understand why she is drawn so tightly to Billy in the present day alongside the fictional original “Camp Miasma”, a cinematic Rosetta Stone for understanding both Kris and Billy. The film is at different moments scary, funny, heartfelt; all feelings delivered with a wistful touch, a yearning for an unattainable transcendence that is beautiful to witness.

From the way the camera moves, the way the actors are staged, the use of techniques such as split diopter lenses, Schoenbrun and cinematographer Eric Yue create a visually mesmerizing film even in the quietest of moments and yet it’s never just style for the sake of style. The painted backgrounds, on top of being stunningly intricate and beautiful, serve to amplify the central themes of derealization and desire to watch and be watched in the movies.

In perhaps my favorite shot of the film, Kris is about to go to bed in Billy’s cabin but hears a voice in the room next door. She approaches the wall, and a narrow sliver of light escapes from a seam in the wall, catching her eyes while the rest of the room remains shrouded in darkness.

The third act will certainly alienate much of the audience as it descends further and further into its meta-textual exploration of finding meaning in art with a healthy dose of wish fulfillment to boot but Schoenbrun’s films, the unique blend of imagery and theme, have a tendency to burrow deep into your psyche such that you will be thinking about individual moments and ideas long after the movie ends.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Rated R for bloody violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and some language.
Running Time: 1 hour and 52 minutes.

Director Jane Schoenbrun
Writers Jane Schoenbrun
Stars Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, Jack Haven, Patrick Fischler
Rating R
Running Time 112 Minutes
Genres Drama, Horror, Romance, Thriller