Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Review

Our first glimpse of this new vision places us in the literal shoes of the fictional masked killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), who is wandering around a production set. It’s the first of many instances in which Schoenbrun demonstrates a talent for capturing the specific textures of the slasher films of old. Just like how I Saw the TV Glow was a pitch-perfect encapsulation of the teen shows you’d gather around to watch once a week with your friends, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma feels like it could very well be a slasher series that we had just all forgotten about.

After this initial look behind the scenes, which ends up being the first hint of how Schoenbrun will provocatively yet poignantly play with perspective, we learn that the series had a precipitous fall from the heights with which it began. There are already so many side-splittingly great jokes in just these first few minutes as it lays this out via quick headlines that flash by. While Schoenbrun has always had an underappreciated sense of humor, this short sequence establishes this as their funniest, most biting film yet.

That humor continues as we meet Kris (Einbinder), who has been tasked with helming a new remake in this horror series. She made a critically acclaimed film that made a splash at Sundance, and as studios are wont to do, she’s been scooped up to take on this remake. Kris decides that she’ll go meet the franchise’s former lead, the reclusive Billie (Anderson), to get her perspective and maybe even bring her back to work on the new film. But what happens when a “final girl” like Billie steps back from the series that made her an icon and decides to focus on exploring her own identity? And what happens when a person like Kris – who experienced a sexual awakening of sorts because of this schlocky, often quite dated series of horror films – enters the mix? Well, the result is a slyly dark comedy and a sharp horror riff that constantly keeps you on your toes, with an often overwhelmingly personal laying bare of the characters’ deeper desires. Einbinder is hilarious as always, but she also brings a vulnerability to the part that sneaks up on you, ensuring the film’s more tender moments work just as well as the playfully teasing ones.

This could sound like too much for one movie to take on, and there are some moments in the story where you can start to feel things straining. But rather than burst at the seams, the film embraces the chaos at the core of this premise and lets it explode outwards, never once hiding away from the inevitable messiness that comes pouring out. While you can tell that Schoenbrun was working with limited locations and budget, they’re never lacking in ambition and take increasingly bigger leaps in their exploration of desire. At every turn, the movie zigs when you expect it to zag, moving from outright comedy to a more captivating and delicately rendered meditation on desire. For all the ways that so much of modern cinema can feel rather tame in how it engages with such questions, Schoenbrun fearlessly kicks down the door of any boring prudishness to lean into grappling with our libidinal impulses. Can death and sex become intertwined? Can a terrible old horror movie still awaken something in you? Schoenbrun not only gets into the guts of all this, but they’re having an absolute bloody blast while doing it.

It’s a film that’s very much not going to be for everyone, but for those that are able to get on the same wavelength, it’s truly exhilarating. There are shades of David Lynch (with one shot midway through recalling some of his uncanny visuals), as well as something of David Cronenberg’s Crash floating in the background. But just as importantly, this is also 100 percent Jane Schhoenbrun, with a sensational score by Alex G and precise cinematography by Eric Yue immersing us in all of it. Even when it stumbles a bit through the wilderness of its increasingly “real” horror setting, the film always regains its feet to run off in exciting new directions.

Some of this will almost certainly divide Schhoenbrun fans, though that’s not a bug but a feature. This is one of those wonderful instances of a filmmaker making exactly the movie they want to make, flaunting any expectation that they make something “commercial” or safe and instead taking a big swing. There’s so much about it that shouldn’t work, right down to a cheeky final needle drop that ties it all together. Somehow, despite all that could go wrong, the film finds a climactic ecstasy just as it maintains the same joyous verve all the way through to its fantastic final frames. What a pleasure it is to witness a filmmaker like Schoenbrun working with such liberated boldness once more.