Director Jane Schoenbrun explores film franchise fandom in this rom/com followup to I Saw The TV Glow.
TEENAGE SEX & DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (2026)
★★★★ & 1/2 ★ of ★★★★★ stars
Horror and franchise fandom is something that is ingrained. The same way someone is a fan of a certain sports team and will follow them to the ends of the earth and every championship or playoff loss, horror fan swill champion their favorite franchise, from Jeepers Creepers, to Chucky, to Sleepaway Camp as a ride or die stan. Horror franchises are something you grow up with, for a lot of people they’re a part of their first sexual experience, their first visceral memory of gore built into their brain. In Jane Schoenbrun’s TEENAGE SEX & DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA that is part of the rich tapestry she’s exploring. The film follows Kris, played by Hannah Einbender, who is an indie movie darling tapped to resurrect the “zombie IP” that is the Camp Miasma franchise with a reboot. Kris has a deep connection to the franchise, one tied to the intimacy issues in the polycube she shares with her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s boyfriend, Thor. She sets out to reconnect with the film’s reclusive original final girl, Billy Presley (played by Gillian Anderson), to see if she can give her some insight into the franchise. Billy is something of a Norma Desmond/Sunset Boulevard character – she even lives on the actual summer camp used to film the Miasma movie series. During their meeting, a spark grows in Kris to see if Billy will be the aspect that can reconnect fans to this franchise in a new iteration, maybe even base it around her. But the spark is one that can solve her issues with being able to be comfortable in her skin and actually enjoy sex and intimacy in her persoanl life (Little Death, the name of the slasher series’ antagonist is the English translation to the french term for an orgasm – Le Petite Morte).
The main storyline in the film is about Kris opening up herself to her own agency and being able to take pleasure and assertiveness in her choices. The frosting on that is seeing her character get there wuithin the veneer of horror nerdiness. The Camp Miasma series is a hodgepodge of 80’s slasher series, mainly Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, with Little Death the antagonist being an exploration of Felissa Rose’s character from Sleepaway Camp in a pseudo Jason outfit to explore problematic representation of trans characters in horror. Jack Haven plays Little Death in the extended scenes we see from the original Camp Miasma and the way they inhabit the character mirrors Kris’ freedom in finding herself with Billy. There is an amazing one shot sequence where Little Death revels in being themselves set to A Long December by Counting Crows that really seals the film as an maazing meta deconstruction of film tropes and stock characters. I Saw The TV Glow does this to some degree with the Buffy fandom deconstruction that is part of that film’s plot, but here we really get a lot of deep cut presentation of tropes and archetypes and how they can mean something more than the script story beats they’re designed to be.
TEENAGE SEX & DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA is a great queer re-examination of what a romantic comedy can be, but its also a great and smart horror film that really lights up your inner child and what horror movies were and what they represent to you. Whether its a bit of your lost teen years, a moment of awakening, a remembrance of the 80s or 90s and Skinamax. It’s something for everyone and the fact that it works on that level says a lot about Schoenbrun’s celebration of fandom and the deeper subtext beneath – maybe even in a hole at the bottom of a lake.
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