Despite its obvious ambition and long title, there’s a clever sense of economy to writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. By the end of the opening credits, they introduce decades of lore, unreal yet familiar, about a slasher movie franchise that has shaped the lives of countless people. Schoenbrun then zooms in on two (or three?) lives in particular, and builds out an even wider world from there.
The thrust of Camp Miasma is one of reclamation. Darling director Kris (Hannah Einbinder) wants to—or has been tasked with—resurrecting the “Camp Miasma” film series. Her bold idea is to connect with the reclusive star of its first entry, Billy (Gillian Anderson), a scream queen who refused to commit to the bit. Of course, as with the monster at the centre of this ersatz franchise, there are layers to the film that, when taken together, create a complex vision of gender and sexual awakening, and of the filmmaking process (its own sort of horror). While comically more graphic than their previous film (I Saw the TV Glow), Schoenbrun operates here in a far more optimistic register. This is ultimately not a story of repression, but one of discovery and the journey towards it. In that mode, both Einbinder and Anderson are up to the inventive task, the former in particular getting to expand her on-screen range. And Schoenbrun, too, continues to elaborate upon their chosen palette.
Filled with knowing symbols and signifiers, nothing is coincidental in Camp Miasma. When Patrick Fischler shows up, for example, it’s because he’s a guy for spooky contexts like this one. Schoenbrun knows this and understands how to deploy these devices. It mutes the experience, though, because while many of the elements involved here are packed with meaning, the film itself starts to feel like a sexy style of homework. Still, the world would be a better place if more cinema tried to be itself this way.
