Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” | Courtesy of MUBI
Charles Salom | Staff Writer
I hear the same generic advice from every filmmaker to aspiring directors. “Make the movie that you want to see.”
No one follows this advice more than Jane Schoenbrun, the queer filmmaker behind the cult classic “I Saw the TV Glow,” an exploration of gender identity and how media shapes how we both connect with and escape the outside world.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows a gay filmmaker named Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) who is hired to create a remake of her favorite horror franchise, “Camp Miasma.” To do so, she sets up a meeting with the reclusive star of the first Miasma entry, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson).
Jane’s cinephile horror knowledge is used to craft the reality of Camp Miasma, modeled after 80s slasher franchises like Friday the 13th, which drags on with dozens of entries, including titles like “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” and then makes a sequel the following year titled “A New Beginning.” And when the crystal lake of ideas really runs dry, the franchise drags Jason into New York or even outer space
This is the dreariness of a franchise meant to scare teens on first dates and scare critics into thinking the cinema is doomed.
Despite its goofiness, this type of horror filmmaking means a lot to Kris, whom Einbinder plays with perfect charm and awkwardness, fully embodying how nerdy and tense she feels in her own skin. But her eventual confidence will only be as believable as the older steward who she has to instill it in her.
This is where Jane does a brilliant job casting the picture with the Norma Desmond-inspired Billy Presely; her southern accent makes her inviting, and actress Gillian Anderson’s glares make her mysterious and exotic. Gillian Anderson is best known for playing Special Agent Scully in the sci-fi TV series The X-Files. While her character is not queer, the queer community has identified Scully as an icon who has helped many discover and awaken their own sexuality.
This makes Anderson a perfect candidate to play that same figure for Kris.
Along with meta casting and meta franchise references, Jane injects the film with a satire on Hollywood and how it positions itself to tell queer stories not for the sake of art but for profit. Kris is offered the chance to remake Miasma because the executives want to reboot the historically transphobic villain (inspired by Sleepaway Camp’s shocking twist reveal) into a powerful modern-day queer commentary.
Jane is clearly drawing on their experience as a trans filmmaker who undoubtedly had strange meetings with executives after I Saw the TV Glow’s success.
Fundamentally, Camp Miasma is a film about finding sexual confidence and comfort.
For Kris, that confidence comes not only from her relationship with Presley but from her attachment to the media she grew up consuming.
Much like “I Saw the TV Glow”, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miamsa” creates a fictional world where the protagonists find both escape and confirmation of their identity and reality. In “I Saw the TV Glow”, the “Pink Opaque” is the beautiful, magical world protagonists Owen and Maddie can use to forget their troubles at home and the confusion around their identity, but it also confirms their identity through this media. Jane sets up Camp Miasma as this world for Kris, both an escape from her confusion around sex, but also a confirmation of the arousal she feels around the danger of being the final girl in a crop top t-shirt running through the forest.
While thematically linked with Jane’s previous work, Camp Miasma’s slasher influence and its more vulgar topic around sex and orgasm make this a worthwhile follow-up. This vulgarity and overindulgence in blood, sex, and violence will turn many away.
But here, viewers have a choice, and I think one path is clearer than the other.
One can see a Trans filmmaker like Jane make a movie about a female filmmaker who falls in love with horror movies and uses them as a sexual awakening as a painfully self-indulgent, masturbatory exercise that makes your eyes roll (not in a good way).
Or you can see it as a complex, innovative filmmaker taking their personal sexual experience and love of horror cinema to deliver one of the most visually unique and ambitious films this year.
I lean closer to the latter. I will be seated for the next Jane Schoenbrun film, and I find solace in knowing they love film and its cathartic power as much as I do.
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