Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Going by Letterboxd popularity, Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to I Saw the TV Glow is the most anticipated title in this year’s Cannes line-up. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma was selected to open the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, which required unfolding of the aisle emergency chairs to accommodate its hungry audience in the Debussy Theater.

Queer filmmaker Kris (Hacks‘s Hannah Einbinder) has been entrusted with directing the latest Camp Miasma slasher; a series she refers to as too rooted in transphobia to be properly rebooted. She believes her hook into “beating Hollywood at its own game” is bringing back the first film’s final girl Billy Presley, now a reclusive but alluring Norma Desmond type (Gillian Anderson). What begins as a professional meeting soon spirals into a psychosexual entanglement between the two women.

Mixed reviews for individual Camp Miasma instalments are showcased throughout the picture’s opening credits, alongside movie memorabilia of the fictional saga; a hall of mirrors constantly reflecting back on its own production and genre tropes. Einbinder’s character herself feels like a portal to the world behind the screen. Stories about making a no-budget first feature, which “the audiences didn’t really get, but the critical reception opened doors in the industry” feel like they come directly from Schoenbrun’s mouth.

It would be superfluous to call Teenage Sex and Death a love letter to the Golden Age of slasher films. Amidst its heartfelt adoration for relentless gore to provide an out-of-body experience, there is ample space for the piece to acknowledge the conflicting relationship queer audiences can have with being othered and villainised. However, Billy Presley interrupts Kris’s musings on gender non-conformity being instrumentalised as a weapon to instil fear. What the genre boils down to is “flesh and fluid.” In the end, anything committed to celluloid is a translucent barrier upon which the audience project their own desires.

That is not to say that Schoenbrun’s third feature takes on a documentary-esque or essay approach; it definitely has fun exploring the concept of the splatter film from all angles and relishes in its opportunities to spill fake blood. It is more comedy than fright fest, finding comfort in the uncomfortable and refusing to be boxed in.

Anderson’s Southern accent for the part may take some getting used to, but her presence is so commanding, one cannot imagine this mysterious femme fatale played by anyone else. Einbinder perfectly complements this with a millennial awkwardness, a too-constant self-awareness of the body. There are a few instances where her character talks to herself which feel redundant to the in-tune performance.

No-holds-barred, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma triumphantly reclaims the meta-horror throne recently vacated by the downfall of the Scream franchise in its exploration of horror as the ultimate role play.