Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers.
Synopsis: This review briefly explores the career of queer, millennial film director Jane Schoenbrun, recognized for their innovative work in the horror film genre.
In a world of uncertainties, one thing remains consistent: a new Jane Schoenbrun movie will always be divisive. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is perhaps their most divisive film yet. It’s a sapphic, erotic, metatextual, self-aware horror comedy that doesn’t fully conform to even those few qualities. Each shot is packed with diegetic inconsistencies and hyperbole designed to delight Schoenbrun’s supporters and enrage their critics.
It’s a dense, loud, poppy overstimulation fest that rewards those who follow down the rabbit hole. But, as a blond Gillian Anderson says, “if it gets too real, you can always turn it off.”
The trademark feature of Schoenbrun’s work is the entanglement of their experience as a nonbinary person with media consumption. Now, including “Camp Miasma,” each entry in their filmography seemingly examines Schoenbrun’s own life and interests. “Camp Miasma” focuses on a young writer-director’s attempt to convince the one-time star of an 80’s slasher film called “Camp Miasma” to star in a reboot of the franchise. The director’s telltale style emerges further as the line between fiction and reality begins to blur. Schoenbrun’s latest, like their prior two films, is not claiming to be a substantive film about the single transgender experience, as such a film doesn’t exist. Rather, “Camp Miasma” appeals to themes of intimacy in general.
The film is a comedy that makes fun of the goofy tropes found in the slasher microgenre of horror. Its resistance to taking itself seriously will turn many viewers into loops, much to the satisfaction of the director. But here’s the thing: “Camp Miasma” is actually an impressionist romance film, decidedly not a slasher in the conventional sense. The viewer’s confusion is exhibited by the protagonist Kris, played by Hannah Einbinder, who misunderstands why Gillian Anderson’s reclusive ex-actor refuses to star in any of the prior sequels and reboots in the “Camp Miasma” franchise. The film is a rejection of the cynicism and meanness of “elevated horror” and turns the cheesy splatter violence of its reference material into liberation and self-expression.
Schoenbrun intends to course-correct away from the contemporary academic overanalysis of the 80’s slashers, through which many entries in the genre have been unfairly dismissed. “Camp Miasma” defies such conventions by leaning into them. The “death” part of “Camp Miasma” is the same thing as the “sex.” The film recognizes that slasher films are inherently sexual and are consistently misread.
If one were to construct a wordy academic analysis of this film’s themes, it might look something like this: people, particularly women, grow up with the expectation that the loss of their virginity will be a great milestone in their lives, which forms specific expectations. The older a person gets, the more they feel the societal expectation to have sex. At that point, it may matter less who that person is because the event must happen and time appears to be running out.
What happens when a person doesn’t fit into that narrative? What if they have no desire to have sex or at least not until they are more certain in their identity? Unfortunately, as the film shows, the experience of losing one’s virginity under the circumstances is rarely ideal and is frequently traumatic. “Camp Miasma’s” answer to these questions is not meant to be a definitive or universal solution. Two characters find that they have the same hesitations towards intimacy and for the same reasons.
Enter Little Death, the gender-nonconforming villain of the “Camp Miasma” franchise. When the two protagonists discover their similarities, they “catch a signal” from the lake in the middle of a camp where Little Death is known to appear. Thus, Little Death is not an individual, but the personified repressed attractions of a genderqueer person. They appear when a young character is being socially isolated for the feelings they don’t understand. Therefore, representing the feelings of repression and dissociation.
Schoenbrun then further nuances this idea by allowing the protagonists to take back their agency through reclaiming the previously sexist, homophobic and transphobic 80’s slasher tropes as kinks. The characters no longer feel crushed by the oppressive weight of societal expectations because they aren’t worried about fitting in either narrative; that of the victim and that of the “liberated” puritan. The characters then can relinquish their autonomy in consensual ways that encourage their feelings rather than squeeze them into particular boxes.
Thus, the violence in “Camp Miasma” is little more than two consenting adults participating in kinks. The teenage sex and death are entangled as two sides of the same coin.
So if the “Camp Miasma” franchise isn’t a tropey, bigoted mess and it isn’t an overanalyzed tool of “wokism,” as Kris suggests to Billy, what is it? Billy’s answer is all we need. “Flesh and Fluid.” Don’t overthink it.
Grade: A