Thoughts on Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

     At the Angelika Film Center in New York City, I saw Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a 2026 surrealist psychological thriller written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun. The film stars Hannah Einbinder as Kris, a young queer filmmaker who is 29 years old, and after some critical acclaim with her debut indie film, a reimagining of Pyscho from the perspective of the shower curtain, she has been given the reins to direct a reboot of the 1980s-1990s slasher film franchise Camp Miasma, where the slasher killer, Little Death (Jack Haven) resurrects from the lake at a summer camp whenever young counselors are having sex to murder them with a spear. Because the films have been seen as transphobic through a modern sense, with the killer being a genderqueer trans figure that is presented as a "freak" through the film's lens, Kris knows that as a queer filmmaker, she was hired to smooth over the film's problematic past, make it more modern and "woke," and bring good PR to the studio for hiring a queer filmmaker for the job.

    As part of her research, she wants to cast the first film's star actress, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), Camp Miasma's "final girl" who immediately retired from acting after the first film. Kris travels to the Pacific Northwest and finds her living on the abandoned campgrounds that were used to film the first Camp Miasma. There, in all her Southern belle glory, Billy is warm and charming and open to Kris, who is nervous and excited and fanning out a little over Billy and the Camp Miasma series. As they get to know each other, with Billy wanting to know more about Kris beyond her filmmaker credits and job, Kris reveals how Camp Miasma was her queer awakening as a child, watching the film at too young an age, and connecting her sexual awakening with the thrill of watching people get stabbed while having sex or being chased by Little Death (which is a not-subtle reference to le petit mort, the French expression for orgasm). Billy and Kris watch Billy's print of Camp Miasma, and Kris is trying to watch the film through Billy's eyes, seeing the younger Billy (Amanda Fix) star in the film, playing a shy young virgin who is seduced by another counselor (Arthur Conti) in the film.

    The film is a really interesting mix of being satirical, like making fun of Kris being progressive in a performative kind of way, like when the characters in the film are about to tell the origin story of the killer and Kris whispers to Billy "This is the transphobic part," and Billy shushes her to shut up, or when Billy clearly doesn't get Kris' Psycho remake of analyzing the sexuality and gender politics of the film through the perspective of the shower curtain. 

    Kris has a nonbinary partner and is polyamorous, and her partner has a bisexual male partner, but Kris has never been able to relax with sex or feel sexually comfortable in her own body and let go, and her pleasure comes more from her love of candy, specifically gummy worms (there are a couple of fun sequences when Kris is in a town gas station and stocking up on different types of candies, filling her shopping cart with them). Billy decides to help Kris discover her own orgasm and sexual understanding, and how her sexuality relates to the slasher film, in ways that blend fantasy and reality in surrealistic sequences.

    I really liked this film, and how it explored the connections of sex and death with the slasher film genre, like the stabbing of a knife or spear as a penetrative reference, and the blood gushing out as metaphor for an orgasm, and how conflicting and weird it can feel for someone to have their sexual awakening come from an unusual source. Einbinder and Anderson have really sweet, fun chemistry together, and Anderson is just glorious to watch in this film, soaking up the kind of Blanche DuBois accent she did in a stage performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, and having mystery to her as Billy living alone as a recluse on the old campgrounds.

    Highlighted scenes: the close-ups of dipping sauces as Billy and Kris eat fried chicken, with exaggerated foley noises of the chicken being dipped into the sauce; the cover by Okay Kaya of R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming" that plays over the opening credits that pans through the history of the Camp Miasma films, with their reviews starting out positive, then middling, then reappraising the first film, then questioning its transphobia in blog articles; the fun side performances of Kevin McDonald and Patrick Fischler as gas station employees who had small parts in Camp Miasma as locals; the hilarious Zoom meeting that Kris has with the studio in pitching her ideas for the reboot of Camp Miasma, and the performances of Amanda Mix and Jack Haven in the Camp Miasma film, with small roles but bringing a lot of care and understanding to their parts that made it more engaging to watch beyond being slasher movie tropes.

    I haven't seen Schoenbrun's first film, We're All Going to the World's Fair, but I really liked their second film, I Saw the TV Glow, for both the 90s TV nostalgia as a fellow millennial, and for the trans allegories with Jack Haven's character; and I like how their film casts a lot of actors who are on the queer spectrum, like Einbinder, Anderson, Haven, Eva Victor, Jess McLeod, Jasmine Savoy Brown, Quintessa Swindell, and Louise Weard. I like how the movie is sexy and funny and weird and looks beautiful, and I'm glad that Schoenbrun has gotten a higher platform with each movie they make in terms of budget, casting, and music licensing, especially with a few needle drops of well-known songs throughout the film. I recommend this film if you're interested in watching something unusual and different.

Thoughts on Manhunter

    At the Philadelphia Film Society in Philadelphia, PA, I saw a 4K restoration of Manhunter, a 1986 crime thriller written and directed by Michael Mann, based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. The film starred William Petersen as Will Graham, an FBI profiler who is hunting a serial killer named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), otherwise known as the Tooth Fairy. The killer stalks families from a distance and mass murders them in their home, and Graham, having previously caught the serial killer and former psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox) is taking on this job, trying to get inside of the mind of the killer to catch him, and it is triggering his mental health issues and psychosis. He also has to meet with Lecter, who is being held in a high-security prison, to get his insight on the killer's mind and face his demons, as Lecter tried to kill him years earlier.

    I really liked this film a lot. It's very moody with a synth score by Michel Rubini and The Reds, and as the film came out at the time Miami Vice was on, which Mann created, it echoes the same atmospheric style, like with Graham's Florida beach home and the musical montages with rock and pop songs, and big electric guitar solos heightening the drama.

    I liked that a lot of the film was focusing on the forensics of catching the killer, like analyzing a note written by the Tooth Fairy on toilet paper, seeing that it was broken up into two parts and analyzing the ink and paper under infrared light to figure it out, with Graham and his FBI superior Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina)'s body language ready to pounce and run to the next place to get the results, having a short window of time where the evidence is usable. It brought a lot of suspense to the scenes, while also adding it 1980s-era forensic science to the film that made it more fascinating in a nerdy way.

    The casting is excellent. When I initially saw some of this film, William Petersen's character made me feel anxious and uncomfortable, and I stopped watching, but this time around, I stuck with it, and the film's story about him recovering from a mental breakdown and trying to protect his sanity made a lot more sense on why he gets so agitated and tries to think like a killer to catch one. The scene in which he speaks with his son while grocery shopping about why he had mental health issues after Lecter attacked him was really well-acted, and it seemed rare to see a depiction of men talking about their mental problems at that time.

    Dennis Farina was a lot of fun to watch with his nasal Chicago accent and bringing in his background as a former police detective to the role (he had worked as a police consultant to Michael Mann for his film Thief and appeared in his projects). Stephen Lang was excellent as an annoying tabloid reporter who meets a tragic end, and Joan Allen was really convincing as a blind woman, and her scene where she strokes and pets a sedated large tiger was gorgeous to watch.

    Brian Cox was fantastic as Hannibal Lecter, who is only in a few scenes of the film, but is intelligent and funny and manipulative, and finds ways to antagonize Graham under guises of politeness. And Tom Noonan was chilling as the Tooth Fairy, a tall, lanky figure who cannot get emotionally close to anyone. The sequence of the film from his perspective, where Joan Allen's character seduces him and he doesn't know how to handle a woman being attracted to him was really interesting, and how he feels like he could be normal with a woman before inevitably reverting back to his serial killer ways.

    I'm glad I watched this film again and understood it much better, it's a really fantastic crime thriller of the 1980s, and started off the film and TV franchise of the Hannibal Lecter series that would go on for decades.

Thoughts on Postcards from the Edge

     On Hulu, I watched Postcards from the Edge, a 1990 comedy-drama directed by Mike Nichols and written by Carrie Fisher, based on her 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. The film stars Meryl Streep as Suzanne Vale, a once-successful actress who survives a drug overdose and does a stint in rehab, and will only be covered by her next film's insurance company provided that she stay sober and live with her mother, Doris (Shirley MacLaine), an alcoholic actress who had her own fame as a cabaret star and still relishes attention.

    Suzanne starts out the film making a political thriller set in Central America, doing a long take that she messes up a few minutes into it, pissing off her director Lowell Kolchek (Gene Hackman), who sees her as a drug addict ruining his movie. The next morning, she is passed out in bed with Jack (Dennis Quaid), a film producer and random man she met the night before, and she has accidentally overdosed on pills, and he drops her off at the hospital. Her life is saved when the doctor (Richard Dreyfuss) pumps her stomach, and she wakes up in a rehab center, admitted by her mother, Doris. Her intake counselor (CCH Pounder) informs her that she is in detox, and Suzanne has no memory of what has happened, but insists she is not suicidal.

    Suzanne completes her time in rehab, making friends with fellow addict-in-recovery Aretha (a funny and wry Robin Bartlett) then her agent tells her that the studio will only insure her if she lives with a responsible person to keep her sober and accountable, and the only person who is available for her to live with is her mother. Suzanne is hesitant because her mother is a show-off who sucks up the attention in the room (when she visits her in rehab, another patient approaches her as an adoring fan and says he performed one of her songs in his drag act), as well as always feeling in her shadow. 

    The two live together while Suzanne works on the film, a lower-budget schlocky film in which she plays a cop, where the film is on a tight budget and doesn't have time for rehearsals, so she's thrown into scenes with little preparation, like a scene where she is tied to a prop cactus then told afterwards there will be live snakes in the scene. Suzanne and Doris butt heads, where Doris will make passive-aggressive comments at Suzanne's expense and pretend like she didn't mean any harm, and Suzanne will deal with things with humor and sarcasm, a touch from Carrie Fisher's writing and personality. 

    In one scene, Doris throws a surprise party for Suzanne to celebrate her completion of rehab, and Suzanne is pushed to sing in front of the partygoers by a live pianist. She chooses Ray Charles' "You Don't Know Me," initially with her back to the audience, and singing it with sadness and vulnerability, looking at her mother and wanting her love and recognition, only for Doris to be in performance mode, mouthing the lyrics and miming stage directions to Suzanne to remove her jean jacket when performing. Afterwards, Doris is pushed to sing, and pretends to act bashful before saying to the pianist, ""I'm Still Here" in D flat," a Sondheim number from Follies. Doris performs a number clearly well-rehearsed with gestures and inflections, flashing her legs for sex appeal, and completely overshadowing Suzanne at a party that was meant to be about her, with a look of disappointment on Suzanne's face.

    Suzanne struggles with the film, getting feedback that her performance is weak and without energy, and overhears the wardrobe department criticizing her body and calling her out of shape. She has a fling with Jack, only to learn later that he is a womanizer who uses the same lines on women ("You smell like Catalina" being one of them), with Suzanne learning about this from a fellow actress, played by Annette Bening during her rise to fame (she would also shine greatly in Stephen Frears' The Grifters the same year). Suzanne feels vulnerable and angry that she let herself be romanced by this man when she is still in recovery and trying to rebuild her career, and being under Doris' judgmental eye doesn't help her sense of self.

    The film focuses more on the mother-daughter drama, and Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine are really good in this, especially in scenes when they are arguing with each other and Suzanne is trying to really be seen by her mother. Doris doesn't want to be blamed for her daughter's drug addiction, but can't see how her alcoholism and putting her daughter on sleeping pills as a kid influenced her inclination towards addiction. The film has a great supporting role performance by Mary Wickes as Suzanne's grandmother and Doris' mother, who is very judgmental of her daughter, and easily showing to the audience how generational trauma between the women is passed down, with one criticizing the other and refusing responsibility for someone's self-medicating but harmful behavior.

    Gene Hackman is only in a few scenes, showing up much later when Suzanne has to do ADR looping to improve her performance in her previous film, and with sobriety she is able to see how terrible her past performance was, even as her director still tells her she has talent. Suzanne cries after she redoes a line, and explains it as "Nothing you say to me is as horrible as what I say to myself... and at least it's happening outside my head where I can deal with it easier." She talks about how she knows she has a great life as a famous actress, but that it's hard for her to feel good in her head, to have good mental health to match her outside life. And her director talks to her about how her epiphany and realization doesn't mean that her life will immediately change for the better, and that life isn't like the movies, there will be a delayed reaction in just continuing to live life as a sober person and work on getting better, and his words resonated with me, the feeling like life is a continued work in progress on being better even when you've messed up or had setbacks.

    Carrie Fisher was a smart and funny person who used her celebrity and privileged status to destigmatize mental illness, being frank about her bipolar disorder and substance abuse, and using her talent to become a successful writer of several novels and memoirs, as well as a script doctor on films like Sister Act, The Wedding Singer, and Anastasia. Watching this film, as well as rewatching the YouTuber Be Kind Rewind's video on Fisher and this film, made me miss her more as a personality.