Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Review: Jane Schoenbrun’s Fluid and Flesh Filled Deconstruction of the Slasher

Since their debut in 2021, Jane Schoenbrun has been in constant conversation with the media that’s shaped them and the culture at large through the specific lens of identity. With their feature debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Schoenbrun examined online spaces and the duality of isolation and community they bring. On I Saw the TV Glow, they utilized TV to explore gender dysphoria and identity.

Now, Schoenbrun takes their biggest swing yet with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, an ambitious, blood-soaked take on the slasher genre. Although, that description almost feels too simple to describe what Schoenbrun is doing in their third outing.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma immerses us into a richly-drawn world immediately via the opening montage chronicling the rise and fall of the Camp Miasma slasher franchise. Schoenbrun crams in images of board game spinoffs, degrading headlines, and an ever-growing VHS tower of the endless Miasma sequels. Before the movie even begins, the audience understands the long and tenuous history of the fictional franchise.

Enter Kris (Hannah Einbinder), an up-and-coming queer director who is handed the long-dormant franchise in an attempt to reboot the series through fresh eyes. Though she’s well aware of the franchise’s problematic history, she also holds a special connection to the franchise, specifically the original film.

In an effort to crack the story, Kris visits Billy Pressley (Gillian Anderson), the final girl from the original Miasma film. After the film’s success, Billy declined the opportunity to return for sequels and turned into a Norma Desmond-esque recluse who now lives at the abandoned set from the original film. It’s here that fiction and reality begin to blur and delirium encroaches.

Purely from a technical standpoint, Schoenbrun is firing on all cylinders. Their usual visual flair is omnipresent here once more, colliding with frenetic ambition to up their game behind the camera. They deftly maneuver between homage to slashers and their own flashy take on genre conventions, merging these visions into something all its own.

There’s also a major tonal pivot for Schoenbrun, whose last two films marinated in existential dread. There is still a heaviness bubbling beneath the surface, but Schoenbrun embraces a self-aware campiness that allows for a much funnier experience than we’re used to from the auteur.

Schoenbrun’s proclivity for camp also allows every moment to drip with a heightened sense of sensuality. Billy and Kris’ hushed monologues tantalize and tease the audience thanks to Einbinder and Anderson’s crackling chemistry. The duo sends the tension into the stratosphere as they hang on each other’s words and drink each other in with stolen glances.

Individually, these ladies are at the top of their games as well. There is a clear understanding of the world Schoenbrun has created and their function within it.

Fresh off the final season of her hit TV show Hacks, Einbinder turns in a much more restrained performance than we are used to seeing from the rising star. Kris is timid and constantly trying to take up as little space as possible, and Einbinder completely surrenders to the physicality required.

However, Kris is far from uninteresting and drinks everything around her in with a ferocity. Einbinder’s eyes alone deliver monologues that tell us everything on her mind and craft Kris’ interiority with detail. As Kris descends deeper into her journey, Einbinder comes alive with a delightful tenacity.

Anderson, meanwhile, works almost in direct opposition to Kris without swallowing her whole. She delivers every line to the back of the house in the most mesmerizing way, pulling at every syllable like taffy. She’s silly, glamorous, and a bit hard to read.

But, beneath the persona, Billy is quite haunted by her experiences. Beneath the theatricality that serves up a lot of comedic gold, Anderson truly shines in the silence. Her distant gaze transports her somewhere dark, and we feel just how broken this woman actually is.

Schoenbrun also revels in the opportunity to play with the idea of artifice on a visual level. Emphasized by Brandon Tonner-Connolly and Matt Hyland’s remarkable production design, the sets feel like sets and there is no attempt to make the painted matte backgrounds feel “real.” Cinema and reality melt into a surreal confection.

The world built around these actors sharply uplifts one of Schoenbrun’s major themes at play. Art is formative to the audience in myriad ways. What we watch colors the way we move through the world.

Schoenbrun takes this one step deeper with the divergence of Kris and Billy’s experience with the Camp Miasma franchise. While Kris derived a sexual awakening from her first experience watching the film as a kid, Billy’s experience of the same moment holds much darker memories. The experience of creating something is much different than the experience of watching that thing.

The further the film goes, the more it reveals its intricacies. While it may not be as tight as I Saw the TV Glow, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma boasts a rich screenplay that offers up a thematic buffet for audiences to dig into.

Most obviously, the film engages with the longstanding slasher genre, acting as a simultaneous meta-commentary, deconstruction, and reclamation of the genre and all its rough edges. The slasher genre is rife with problematic material whether we’re discussing the hyper-sexualized depiction of women or transphobic messaging. Schoenbrun tackles this through direct and clever methods (including a very specific and incredible reference to 1983’s Sleepaway Camp), but also doesn’t negate the fact that these movies are entertaining and formative.

Beyond the genre analysis is an exploration of sexual repression and desire. Some may find its dive into more abstract territory dizzying, but, for me, this is where the film becomes something truly special.

Schoenbrun unpacks the fear and stigma surrounding sex by harnessing the horniness of the slasher genre and their aptly named killer Little Death (Jack Haven). Kris mentions to Billy that Camp Miasma was their awakening, but they remain stilted and uncomfortable whenever the conversation turns toward sex.

For queer people and women, whether its due to stigma, lack of resources or information, or the omnipresent threat of violence, sex is often framed through a lens of fear. That’s on top of the grandiose mythologizing that happens with sex in our world already. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma acknowledges that anxiety but explores what happens when one embraces deeply buried fantasies without shame.

In an age when even the best slasher franchises are worn to the bone, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma feels like a cold blast of fresh air. It lovingly winks to the slashers that paved the way, but isn’t so precious that it cannot loudly and proudly critique them for their shortcomings. It snuggles close to the tropes that shaped the genre and immediately subverts them at every possible chance.

Yet, dubbing it a genre reinvention doesn’t quite do it justice.

At the center of it all is something that is deeply personal for Schoenbrun while also speaking to the shared experience of being impacted by movies. It brilliantly visualizes the idea of being shaped by the work we consume and how we project ourselves back onto that work and the world at large.

Schoenbrun’s third outing is a dense film in the best possible way. There’s no simple way to define it and it certainly has no interest in holding your hand to guide you to the definition. The result, though, is a rewarding resurrection of a genre long thought to be stale that awakens something entirely new.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens in theaters August 8th.

 

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