‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ Review: Jane Schoenbrun’s Affectionate Ode to Slashers, Orgasms, and Gillian Anderson

Visionary filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s work is many things, but you wouldn’t up to this point have necessarily called it optimistic or accessible. The enthusiastically queer, genre-literate director used their feature debut “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” as not just a love letter to internet creepypastas and the scary stories we tell our young selves for comfort, but also as a coming-out missive. With the making of that film came Schoenbrun’s revelation of their own nonbinary transness. Next painting on an even grander, more metaphysical canvas, their second feature — the wounding and masterful metaphor-as-movie “I Saw the TV Glow” — used millennial nostalgia to construct a self-portrayal of their own gender dysphoria.

With Schoenbrun’s slippery latest film, the sapphic slice of cinema “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” comes a statement about what happens after gender dysphoria’s annihilation — a reflection on the sexual unease experienced once you’ve finally fit into your body but perhaps don’t know what to do with it. The ways in which we’ve gotten so far in our own heads that sex is now more concept than carnal, surrendering act sets the stage for an erotic explosion in this cerebral, pop-colored tale centered on 29-year-old filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder, who’s internalized the role wonderfully). Bookish and bright, she has been optioned to direct a “woke” 21st-century reboot of a piece of zombie IP, a transphobic ‘80s slasher movie franchise called “Camp Miasma.” But in this film, a for-hire industry assignment opens a portal into sexual awakening with help from the franchise’s original final girl, played by Gillian Anderson.

In the fictional film world of the “Camp Miasma” franchise, the central villain is not a masked Jason type, but instead a bloodthirsty ghost known as Little Death (which is also, as you probably know, a colloquial bon mot meaning orgasm). Seemingly inspired by “Silent Hill’s” Pyramid Head but with an HVAC suit for an outfit and an industrial air vent for a helmet (one that resembles an early cinematograph movie camera whenever you see “I Saw the TV Glow” breakout Jack Haven’s face poking out of it), the spear-armed Little Death is the vengeful spirit of a drowned former sleepaway camper. Once teased for their transness, Little Death is now eternally doomed to the bottom of the lake at Camp Tivoli when not seasonally resurfacing to kill horny teenagers (and, of course, doomed to be reincarnated in endless sequels).

The metaphor bluntly invoked by this villain’s winking sobriquet, for one thing, tips to Schoenbrun’s cheeky embrace of just how literal their latest film means to be — a dramatic focus pull from the allegorical universe of “I Saw the TV Glow.” At the same time, you can view the work as a visceral slasher send-up, a stylish academic exercise about gender expression and inquiry in horror iconography, or as just a plain old, super fun, future cult lesbian classic. Either way, it will take multiple viewings of this film to fully embed yourself inside it — body, brains, and all.

As many viewings, potentially, as Billy Presley (the mighty Anderson, in a feat of dream-casting for an “X-Files” fan such as Schoenbrun) replays of the original “Camp Miasma” movie she keeps in a film canister. She was the first film’s star who declined roles in the many crappy sequels, who now lives a hermetic life on the actual campground the movie was shot on, not so much drunk on her own legacy but still living inside the world that built it. During a wintry white-out, Kris drives to her home to hopefully entreat Billy to star in the remake Kris is developing, which is meant to wipe the slate clean of the many bad sequels and reboots. (We get a peek at these during the charmingly cluttered, immersive opening credits sequence, taking us through the franchise history with news clippings and the spines of fake VHS tapes.)

Styled as a Norma Desmond figure but with far more inner security and peace than Gloria Swanson’s delusional faded film star, Anderson’s Presley is a marvelously elegant, living, walking myth with a husky Southern accent, beautiful velvety clothes, a fedora, and a screen entrance that indeed says “I’m ready for the first of my many close-ups.” She’s certainly the most feminine creation in Schoenbrun’s oeuvre, her bold silhouette in sharp contrast to Einbinder’s diffident, and relatively androgynized Kris (like the actress’ character on “Hacks,” Kris is also queer and polyamorous, but the similarities end there). Erotic chemistry forms quicker than creative kinship, as filmmaker Kris soon realizes that not only does she definitely want to cast Billy, she also definitely wants to get fucked by her, too.

This all sounds like a lot, and it is, but even still, I’ve barely penetrated the layers of this bold, often spellbinding, and always shapeshifting new film. This is far from Schoenbrun’s most accessible work; indeed, it may not be quite as accessible as it thinks it is. But where this complicated film finds accessibility is in how deeply personal and rooted to the filmmaker’s own interests and pop culture palate it is, whether the whispered cover of REM’s “Nightswimming” that plays over the end credits, or the most unexpected marriage of a Counting Crows song to cinematic material since “Cruel Intentions” — and during an especially gory killing spree. As in “TV Glow,” Schoenbrun shows themselves to be a child of the ’90s at heart and head.

But the more “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” reveals itself, the more it blooms, the more it becomes apparent that this is a film not really about horror movies, not really about pop culture, but actually about, yes, sour gummy candies. About enjoyment, play, and pleasure. I once had a therapist tell me that, in matters of the bedroom, “When you’re in the movie, you shouldn’t be watching the movie.” It would appear that Kris — especially in her relationship with partner Mari (Jasmin Savoy Brown), who’s more invested in the polyamorous arrangement that seems to burn Kris just a little bit — has spent a lifetime “watching” the movie of herself rather than living in it, and that’s made her sexually stunted. Has this woman had an orgasm before? At least none of the kind eventually described by Billy over candlelight.

Has living a life as a spectator of movies and living through them, mentally casting herself as the characters in, say, the “Camp Miasma” franchise to retreat from social rejection, turned her into a voyeur of her own self? Schoenbrun’s movie is an invitation to give into your body — but the film is at the same time very much wrapped up inside its own head, which makes for a prismatic, woozy viewing experience.

In terms of craftsmanship, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is through and through a Jane Schoenbrun movie; there is absolutely no one else, alive or dead, who could have made a feature that looks and feels like this one. The pas de deux between Billy and Kris is entrancingly sexy, and the film’s love relationship to movie magic is just as romantic, from Anderson’s grand-dame costuming to the matte paintings that serve as backdrops in both the film-within-the-film and the one containing it. Brooklyn hipster-adored musician Alex G returns to contribute melancholic, acoustic songcraft, while “TV Glow” cinematographer Eric Yue delivers on Schoenbrun’s promise of making the kind of cozily sinister movie you’d watch furtively in your friend’s basement during adolescent sleepovers.

But “Teenage Sex and Death” is also about Schoenbrun’s relationship to their own work, and most certainly their experience post-“World’s Fair” and even circa “TV Glow” in what I can imagine were fraught meetings with executives hoping to channel but also commercialize their singular voice. Hilariously, Kris is hounded by her hyperactive, industry-Kool-Aided agent (“SNL” star Sarah Sherman) and in one scene has a full-on “Inland Empire”-style, lost-in-the-sauce meltdown during an executive Zoom call in which the barrier between her project and her person gets ripped apart. Schoenbrun’s trenchant reflections on an industry that may have tried to put them into a box they would never fit in so much as go near make for the film’s sharpest satirical touches that will play wildly for an industry crowd.

It’s been mesmerizing to watch Schoenbrun not only come out in real time over their last two films, but now come so much into their own powers as a storyteller. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is a heady entertainment, and yet it takes so much pleasure in the craft and care of moviemaking — and also in reminding us that, hello, pleasure is not a concept to be over-intellectualized, but something you can actually feel in your body. They’re asking us to wake up and give in, so why not?

Grade: B+

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Mubi will release the film theatrically starting August 7.

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