Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Film
After blowing up in popularity in the 70s and 80s with classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th, or we could even talk about the influence of Psycho and Italian giallo films in the 60s, slashers have become a mainstay in horror film culture. Every year, swaths of new slashers rise from the muck, new monsters ready to steal the show and of course remnants of slashers past come out with shiny new retreads. What Halloween movie are we on these days? But not every slasher is made equally, and Jane Schoenbrun understands that some of our favorite classic movies may be overly problematic and our favorable memories of them might be difficult to reckon with. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Schoenbrun's third installment in their loosely aligned Media trilogy, is another meta-horror exploration in how we ingest and internalize movies from the perspective of a queer filmmaker (Hannah Einbinder) reviving an old slasher franchise. Slow-moving, methodical, and absolutely bursting with Schoenbrun's penchant for complex layers rich with meta-text, their latest film shows even more deft filmmaking skill but lacks the full exploration it yearns for.
Einbinder's Kris, a 'Sundance Wunderkind' evoking parallels to Schoenbrun's own filmmaking rise, travels to the actual camp the Camp Miasma franchise was filmed at in pursuit of resuscitating it. It's at this camp that Kris runs into, read that as a purposeful accident, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the reclusive final girl from the franchise's first film. Turns out, Billy lives at the camp in a solitude that she finds equally rewarding and lonesome. Their relationship, initially prickly if not overall uneasy, yields to shared desires of belonging, sexual freedom, and rekindling those childlike moments of wonder that it seems only movies can bring.
If that sounds overly saccharine, possibly veering into describing this film as a romantic entanglement type of situation, well then I'd say there's a lot more. Schoenbrun is never one to skimp on the complexities. While Kris and Billy's relationship is the central vehicle of Schoenbrun's film, the story itself is an intricately woven tapestry of meta text that comes off as exceedingly academic without much of the substance needed to fully realize itself.
As a thesis, Schoenbrun is wrestling with ideas of formative moments in our lives being something of a "skeleton in the closet" the older we get. More importantly, how can we still like things that are bad? A fetishized meal of KFC and overtly sexualized dipping sauces (love me some dipping sauces) along with an exorbitant amount of candy being consumed are bolded entries in Teenage Sex and Death. These foods are bad for us, right? How can we love them so much? The same goes for the original Camp Miasma film, something that Kris saw in a formative time in her childhood and experienced a sexual awakening during Billy's character's sex scene. However, the killer in the film is a gender fluid camper that was drowned out of virulent homophobia and transphobia, causing Kris to question her own morality. How can she hold such fond memories of a film that is so hateful towards the group she belongs to?
Within this moral quandary, Teenage Sex and Death thrives. Kris' reckoning with her own feelings and providing expansive therapy-esque monologues to an empathetic Billy is fascinating to watch, hear, and internalize. It's exactly this type of layered nuance that made I Saw the TV Glow so enthralling. Of course it helps that the production design, opting for matte paintings of backgrounds, soft lighting, and dreamy score from Alex G provides an ethereal atmosphere that's delightful to see. Feeling almost like a dream that's teetering on the edge of falling into a nightmare, there's a level of anxious waiting for the script to flip, but not overbearing.
However, when the script does flip, the film flops. The third act to me was a jumbled mess. An overstuffed and wild misdirection from what was really working. It dives deeper into meta territory by becoming one of those movies within a movie (maybe within another movie, I'm not sure) all the while adding a couple more overly complex layers that didn't feel naturally constructed. There's an overarching idea of, and I'm being incredibly broad here, Death himself is in charge of this "movie" called life and he has, what really stresses Kris out, final cut. Combined with buckets of blood, cartoonish violence, and commentary on the current movie industry, there's simply too much to swim through in order to get to the other side of the lake.
I think it is beyond evident that Schoenbrun is a terrifically talented filmmaker, and their ideas are as creative as they are compelling. Midway through the film there's a oner, or close to a oner, following the Camp Miasma antagonist (protagonist?) Little Death as he viciously spears unsuspecting campers that, from a technical filmmaking perspective, is pretty fun to see. But the scene's tone, and gratuitous slapstick pastiche reflects the larger issue plaguing Teenage Sex and Death. An impressive amount of abstract concepts peppered across technical prowess without getting any deeper than the candy-coated sugary exterior. Sadly, leaving me more confused and frustrated than Schoenbrun's prior films.
Froth
In order to match the dreamlike aesthetic of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma I think it's most appropriate to go for something a little hazy. The soft lighting, adding an alluring glow to the feather light snowfall, along with the background paintings (no matter how unrealistic they look) really puts together a fun visual element to the film. Something that I would definitely compare to the soft amber/yellow of a neat little Hazy IPA, like Matchless Brewing's Hazy River. Equally tropical, with powerful pineapple and a pinch of lychee, and hoppy, the Hazy river is a solidly balanced hazy. It's easy to drink and honestly, might be one of the lighter mouthfeel hazy's I've had in recent memory. Yet the flavor and aroma, a solid amount of floral and pine elements dancing around, give it a sensational taste.
