Whew. With the bountiful praise heaped upon I Saw the TV Glow, I was worried Jane Schoenbrun would just end up a filmmaker I just couldn’t get on the wavelength of. That it was only possible for Schoenbrun to make deeply personal films about themselves and that’s it. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is proof that I was dead wrong. Bigger means better in their case. And now the sky’s the limit! Unless Little Death rises from the water.
Little Death is the name of the serial killer in the Camp Miasma slasher film franchise. Having wrung the franchise of almost all its IP value, the studio assigns young aspiring filmmaker Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) to try to jump start the dead Miasma franchise again. Unsure what to do with the story, Kris visits Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the final girl from the first film who’s become a bit of a recluse, living at “Camp Miasma” by herself, hoping Billy can help Kris crack the case.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a miracle of a movie. Rarely does someone make something so deeply personal that’s this commercially entertaining AND artistic. The entire film feels like Jane is presenting themself to us through the Kris character. But that part they have down as TV Glow showed. Schoenbrun takes a step forward with Miasma by integrating more entertainment with their emotional character study, by building it around a classic slasher film. In fact, we all sit together with Kris and Billy, and watch a movie within a movie together, something clearly near and dear to Kris aka Jane’s heart. Little Death’s design and kills are wonderfully gory and over the top, channeling the 80s explosion of the genre, plus a little 90s music montage. Growing up with over a century of movies, Jane, Kris and the whole audience have a history of films we saw as kids that imprinted on us in some way. Then we age, but our mind has expanded, and that lovely film we saw decades ago has lost some luster having gone through the commercial cycle and our own growth. Thus, we are at war with our minds and hearts about how to feel. All while Little Death is unleashing waves of blood through various stabbings of horny kids. That relatable feeling of confusion is something each audience member can find some connection to Jane with while simultaneously putting us on our toes for some more horror mayhem, an near impossible feat of movie magic.
But that’s just one layer of the Camp Miasma experience. With us now anticipating some scares and in their headspace, Jane Schoenbrun starts peeling back Kris’s layers, once by one. That battle of the head and the heart? It’s running through the poor director’s body, completely unsure how to connect with anyone, including themself. Hence why movies were Kris’s salvation: friends that they wished they had when they were younger to help explain life’s rites of passage to them. Enter Gillian Anderson, an ideal guide for Kris. Here’s an actor who’s life never left the movies, and completely understands and accepts the Norma Desmond like twilight of their career. As the two connect over Camp Miasma, Kris connects with a part of themself they never knew they could, because they found a kindred spirit to help them understand and accept their conflicting feelings as equally a part of their whole. That’s deep stuff as we eat KFC and leer at nubile kids getting slaughtered by a weird headed demon; everytime we get too internal, Schoenbrun pulls back a bit, to let the audience have a laugh and take a break before diving in again. But as time goes on, Schoenbrun takes us so deep we learn a lot about our relationship to TV and movies, other commercial pleasure centers like movie theater popcorn or gummy worms, connections between sex and fear, young and old, real life vs movie life, etc. All those topics free flow from the story, weaved masterfully together by our masterful director.
I hope you found some peace on this one Jane Schoenbrun. Although, methinks you’ve already had this type of conversation in your head. And based on what I saw here, it feels like your heart is full as well. I can’t wait for your next movie, and your needledrop deeper cuts that hit me right in my pleasure centers.