TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA: Lust for Life (and Death)

There’s a moment early on in Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, in which the filmmaker character played by Hannah Einbinder describes her work as exploring the intersection of queerness and cultural depictions of monstrosity. Anyone who has watched either of Schoenbrun’s previous films will find themselves nodding knowingly at such an apt description of their work, in which queer identity and gender dysphoria (and euphoria) are keenly explored through millennial media touchstones such as creepypasta (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) and mysterious, mythology-heavy genre television shows (I Saw the TV Glow).

What Schoenbrun’s work also does so well is explore that misty liminal space where our fantasies fueled by pop culture begin to blend with our reality, to the point that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. That concept reaches its apex in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which turns its attention to the gory, sexy, scary slasher flicks of yesteryear and how such films have had a formational influence on so many people’s dreams and desires…even if they are ashamed to admit it. And while this latest film doesn’t reach the heady heights of I Saw the TV Glow, it does provide further proof that Schoenbrun is one of the most interesting and insightful auteurs of our generation.

Flesh and Fluids

The opening credits of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma cleverly set up the backstory of the fictional franchise at the center of Schoenbrun’s film, a series of slasher flicks set at a summer camp called Camp Miasma. The first Camp Miasma was a cultural touchstone that should have made its final girl, Billy Presley (Amanda Fix in flashbacks, Gillian Anderson in the present) into a major star. Instead, she retreated into seclusion, and the franchise slowly but surely dwindled into irrelevance while also securing an uncomfortable place in the pantheon of problematic cinema due to the transphobic backstory of its killer villain, Little Death (I Saw the TV Glow’s Jack Haven, absolutely fantastic).

Now, up and coming queer filmmaker and Camp Miasma superfan Kris (Einbinder) has been tasked by a major studio with resurrecting the franchise for a new “woke” generation. In an attempt to unlock the story, Kris visits the reclusive Billy at her home, which just so happens to be the abandoned summer camp where they shot the original Camp Miasma. What starts as a professional collaboration, however, transforms into something far more intensely personal, especially when Kris reveals that she finds it hard to take pleasure from sex. She’s perpetually seeking to replicate the feeling she had the first time she watched Camp Miasma and saw the strange look in Billy’s eyes when sexual climax and brutal killing fused together into one visceral moment of desire and terror. At the same time, Kris is also somewhat ashamed that this is such a big turn on, and that shame keeps her from actually achieving real pleasure, something that Billy takes it upon herself to assist with.

Fear and Desire

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is at its best when it focuses on the burgeoning relationship between Kris and Billy. Einbinder and Anderson are charismatic actors with fantastic chemistry; when Anderson saunters into the film as the seductive Billy, complete with syrup-thick Southern accent, the audience falls for her just as hard as Kris does. What gradually unfolds between them bears more than a passing resemblance to a sapphic Sunset Boulevard and the relationship between faded actress Norma Desmond and struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis. The film knows this, and it knows you know this, joking about Billy being as reclusive as Norma and outfitting Anderson in retro ringlets and a series of stunning dressing gowns and turbans that somehow manage to make her appear even more Norma Desmond than Gloria Swanson herself.

But this is also one of the film’s issues: the script is much more simplistic and obvious than those for Schoenbrun’s previous features, complete with some clunky dialogue that feels designed to elicit laughs but is more likely to make you cringe. (The worst offender is possibly the moment right before Kris first meets Billy and says that it feels like there’s a jump scare coming.) One imagines that this is an attempt to make Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma feel like one of the trashy horror movies that it is referencing, especially later on in the film when the difference between what is cinematic fantasy and what is real life becomes (as in Schoenbrun’s previous work) harder and harder to distinguish.

However, this is another issue: if you’re going to do genre pastiche, you have to do it right. In We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, the creepypasta invented for the film felt like a spot-on recreation of the ones we were all haunted by on the Internet, while the TV show the main characters are obsessed with in I Saw the TV Glow was a perfect fusion of TGIF-era teen drama and surreal horror. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma devotes a chunk of the middle of the film to showing us what is supposed to be the original Camp Miasma while Kris and Billy are also watching it, and it just doesn’t look or feel like a vintage slasher; the camera work is too smooth and the special effects are too computer-generated, making it better resemble a video game. What feels far more authentic is the hilariously awkward Zoom meeting Kris has with the studio reps, in which everyone perfectly embodies a specific Hollywood type, including the annoying, out-of-touch studio head (Dylan Baker), the stylish striver (Jess McLeod) tasked with navigating the gap in understanding between said studio head and the hip young filmmaker they’re wooing, and the character whose Zoom name merely reads “Queer Assistant” (Louise Weard).

These are the main reasons why Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma didn’t feel as revelatory to me as I Saw the TV Glow did, though, to be fair, it could also be because that earlier film raised my expectations so high that it was almost impossible this new film could have met them. Nonetheless, it’s still a worthwhile watch, one that sensitively explores the intersection between fear and desire while also intelligently engaging with the way many older horror films portray gender fluidity and transness as deviant and horrifying. What do you do when the only media that you recognize yourself with implies that you are inherently evil? And what do you do when you enjoy that media regardless?

Lack of resemblance to a real slasher be damned, it’s hard to not enjoy watching the aptly, obviously named Little Death rampage through a lineup of nubile teens with an air vent on their head, hacking them to pieces and sending up blood geysers so over-the-top that they make the gore in Kill Bill look kid friendly. More importantly, it’s impossible to not enjoy watching Einbinder and Anderson coyly tiptoe closer and closer to each other throughout the film, especially against one of the beautiful matte painting backdrops that make Kris’s growing intimacy with Billy feel all the more like a great romantic fantasy. Plus, the soundtrack features another lovely, lo-fi score from Alex G (who also scored Schoenbrun’s previous two features) as well as a series of needle drops ranging from Sade to Counting Crows that are the ideal combination of totally unexpected and absolutely perfect.

Conclusion

Despite a couple of stylistic missteps, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a fitting capstone to Schoenbrun’s trilogy of films examining the ways we see ourselves reflected in the media we love.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens in theaters in the U.S. on August 7, 2026.