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.