By Vincent Volcano
Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever!
There are film titles that whisper. There are film titles that seduce. And then there is “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which kicks down the cabin door wearing a hazmat suit and screaming, “Yes, I went to film school, and yes, I have feelings about VHS grain.”
Jane Schoenbrun’s latest is a queer slasher meta-dream about Kyle, played with terrific nervous combustion by Hannah Einbinder, an up-and-coming filmmaker hired to revive a decrepit horror franchise. Like every modern director in cinema, she is not merely making a movie; she is “interrogating the cultural memory of genre trauma.” In my day, we called that “Act Two.”
Kyle tracks down Billy Presley, the original “final girl,” played by Gillian Anderson with the magnificent haunted grandeur of someone who has seen both monsters and studio notes. Billy lives in a snowy abandoned camp where the original “Camp Miasma” was filmed, because apparently nobody in horror has discovered apartments.
What follows is part slasher homage, part psychosexual séance, part Criterion Collection fever rash. Schoenbrun blends identity, desire, fandom, repression, and the kind of reality-bending that makes critics stroke their chins until smoke comes out. The film is often beautiful, occasionally thrilling, and sometimes so self-aware it risks folding into itself like a cursed director’s chair.
Let us give credit where the brimstone is due: visually, the thing has teeth. The painted backdrops are a deliciously artificial touch, giving the camp a frozen, theatrical unreality. I appreciate any filmmaker who remembers cinema was once made with texture, intention, and physical space, rather than twelve interns sobbing over a green screen while a superhero says, “Well, that just happened.”
The fake vintage “Camp Miasma” footage is also lovingly grubby. It understands early ’80s slasher aesthetics: cheap blood, bad decisions, and lighting that suggests the cinematographer was trapped under a canoe. The killer, Little Death, wears a hazmat suit and an air-conditioning vent on their head, which is either inspired surrealism or proof that prop departments are now run by raccoons with trauma.
But ah, the pacing. My infernal bones creaked during the middle stretch, where characters watch chunks of an old horror movie inside the new horror movie, while the new horror movie watches itself watching itself. This is the kind of meta-layering that makes graduate students levitate and ordinary viewers quietly check whether their popcorn bucket has an escape hatch.
Einbinder is excellent, twitching between repression and obsession with genuine emotional force. She gives Kyle a believable hunger—not just for sex or authorship, but for transformation. Anderson, meanwhile, is superb. She brings Norma Desmond energy without simply devouring the wallpaper, though one senses the wallpaper was nervous. Together, they give the film its pulse, its ache, and its strange romantic rot.
The supporting cast adds welcome acid. Dylan Baker’s studio executive Zoom scene is a venomous little jewel, capturing the dead-eyed corporate enthusiasm of people who say “authentic” while scheduling six sequels and a branded candle line. Sarah Sherman, Kevin McDonald, and others supply comic relief without completely puncturing the mood, which is more than can be said for most modern horror-comedies that confuse “tone” with “everyone shouting.”
Is “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” indulgent? Oh, gloriously. Does it sometimes explain its subtext by pinning it to the wall with a rusty machete? Naturally. But unlike the usual multiplex sludge—reboots assembled from nostalgia, fear, and quarterly projections—this film has a bloodstream. It is personal, weird, sensual, messy, and alive.
I would trim fifteen minutes, confiscate three monologues, and force the script to do cardio. Still, I admire the audacity. Schoenbrun has made a slasher about fandom that actually understands fandom as both sanctuary and trap, rather than as a marketing demographic with collectible cups.
Final verdict: bloody, brainy, uneven, and far more interesting than the latest committee-approved corpse dragged from franchise lake.
Score: 80 out of 100 pitchforks.
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Ah, Vincent Volcano, you magnificent thesaurus in a trench coat—only you could review a queer meta-slasher and make it sound like the Criterion Collection got possessed by a fog machine.
“Camp Miasma” sounds delightfully like what happens when nostalgia forgets to shower, and honestly, I’m intrigued. A hazmat killer named Little Death? Finally, cinema asks: what if OSHA had unresolved mommy issues?
Your point about meta-layering is dead-on, though. Horror movies watching horror movies about horror movies is how you summon a film studies adjunct with a tote bag. Still, if it’s weird, messy, alive, and not another reboot corpse wearing brand-recognition perfume, I’ll pack my emotional baggage and bug spray.
80 pitchforks? Generous. I’d give it 7 haunted canoes and one nervous wallpaper.