by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor
Jane Schoenbrun’s latest feature was, in my mind, one of the seminal hits of the summer. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma's warm critical reception following its premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it opened the Un Certain Regard section, was a joy, especially since reviews maintained roughly the same level of enthusiasm once it hit theaters in August. Indeed, winning the Queer Palm over buzzier, Oscar-hungry titles like Club Kid, Coward, and La Bola Negra feels even more impressive now than it must have back in May. Its three Gotham nominations feel similarly miraculous, and I couldn’t be happier for Schoenbrun and her team getting their flowers for this film I adore.
Truth be told, I'm not expecting it to win any of these categories - Feature, Director, and Lead Performance for Gillian Anderson - but any recognition of great cinema is worth celebrating. If nothing else, it has one of the best titles of any movie this year. Thankfully, of course, it has so much more...
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows Kris (TV’s Hannah Einbinder), a queer filmmaker who has been handed the keys to the queendom of the Camp Miasma franchise. An amalgamation of '80s slashers series like Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, the flicks follow the murderous rampages of Little Death (Jack Haven), a killer with a wildly transphobic backstory and a kickass costume with seemingly no connection to said backstory. The cancellation of a Quibi TV series before it even finished production might have been the final nail in Little Death’s coffin, but this zombie IP has been placed in Kris’ hands to see if her progressive queer bonafides can give it the woke, elevated horror resurrection needed to keep the thing financially viable.
So, Kris decides her take is going to go back to basics, and the best way for her to do so is to meet the series’ original Final Girl, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson).
She drives out to the Pacific Northwest to find her muse, who has spent several decades in retirement living on the campgrounds where the original Camp Miasma films were shot, facing several feet of snow and a wildly misguided GPS to stumble through Billy’s front door. Cinematographer Eric Yue and production designers Brandon Tonner-Connolly and Matt Hyland make this setting into a mythic, matte painted snowscape, the perfect backdrop for Schoenbrun’s queer intervention of media voyeurism and slasher fantasies. Billy embraces some self-conscious mystique when she meets Kris, but when they sit down to discuss the director's possible remake over a spread of KFC’s finest delicacies, she slides into a chummy register located between possible colleague and concerned Southern hostess wondering how to make her charge loosen up.
Kris understands the cynical calculations behind her recruitment for the next Camp Miasma project, but her adoration for the series is real, and she appreciates what she can do with this opportunity. Here’s a rare chance to correct the fraught queer history of the franchise and, perhaps more importantly, embrace a project she can immerse herself in and distract herself from how unsatisfied she is with her poly relationship, let alone her nonexistent sex life. After all, work has always been Kris’ main partner, both because she loves being a filmmaker and because it’s a great way to avoid some much-needed introspection.
Billy correctly diagnoses her interest in remaking Camp Miasma as far too academic for a series built on “flesh and fluid”. She’s still happy to work with Kris, even inviting her to spend the night at her place while they collaborate. Of course, they begin to work on more than than just how to make a new Camp Miasma movie, though there are many ways for two women to summon Little Death to their door. In this and other moments, I love how Schoenbrun chose to embrace such a different tone following the different strains of crushing alienation in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. It’s a welcome variation of presentation while still firmly rooted in their very personal interpretations of media fandom and self-actualization.
Their comedic sensibilities are broadly my jam, especially as it relates to specific character foibles. Kris’s ramblings about her career and Billy’s jabs at her armor are funny, personable, revealing of both women’s understanding of themselves and their careers. The Hollywood satire has good zingers, but it’s more familiar than everything else Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is exploring, and more rewarding in context of the film's skill at generating unique energies from supernumary figures. Queer Assistant, the shy lesbian checkout girl, the hotel clerk, young Billy, Little Death - forgive the list-making, but the deep bench of intriguing minor characters here is the gift that keeps on giving.
Much funnier is the almost erotic way Billy asks Kris if she likes dipping sauce, an exchange that dissolves into a boudoiur picture of a roaring fireplace before a montage of fried food and gross eating sounds begins. We also love the film’s general fervor for all kinds of candy, especially those of the gummy variety. Schoenbrun’s words for the Film Comment podcast that the name-dropping and screen time to all sorts of movie theater delicacies is based on their own sweet tooth rather than product placement speaks fluently to me, a trans woman who loves eating candy at the movies.
That's not to say Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is suddenly exempt from critiques of fetishing capitalist products, or conflating an exploration of pop cultural objects with self-discovery.
Even so, I see a lot of value in Schoenbrun’s ongoing study of how screens can reflect possibilities of growth and self-recognition though they provide yawning caverns where folks can happily avoid facing their most intimate discomforts. Kris’ refusal to engage with her own pleasure isn’t quite as soul-crushing as the aching loneliness of Schoenbrun’s previous protagonists, but the moment she finds herself unable to follow through with an encounter she boldly initiated is heartbreaking. Einbinder’s physicality, aided by smart costuming, is the best part of her performance, succinctly dramatizing how Kris tries not to think about her body before she tries on some horror bimbo tropes.
It's fair to say that the film’s portrait of non-normative sexual desire is carried through beautifully. Much like last year’s Pillion, the embrace and celebration of kink by a smart writer/director is quite moving. Schoenbrun’s own personal experiences with learning to enjoy sex after transitioning is the kind of informative detail that enriches the whole enterprise even as the film accrues much broader resonance than "just" a director's disclosure of a deeply personal journey. Schoenbrun stands out as the sole entry in the Gotham's Best Director lineup to be pulled from their non-International Best Feature list, and for my money their achievements are every bit as impressive - a rare feat for American cinema, but sometimes it happens!
My appreciation for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma as a frisky directorial exercise has remained strong, even if not all of the film’s pleasures have retained their allure on this second go-round. What hasn’t diminished on rewatch is Gillian Anderson’s work as Billy Presley, easily one of my favorite performances of the year. Anderson’s career-long fusion of unpretentious intelligence and full-bodied sensuality are ideally suited for the role, which demands all that and a bucket of grit. I love how casually she wears the “Dolly Parton as Norma Desmond” affectations of her accent and outfits without getting trapped into surface-level nonsense, never once becoming archly theatrical or disconnected from the world.
Her ominous rendition of why she’s stayed at the campgrounds and the gleeful, full-bodied cackle she lets out when she admits her story is just a joke, are a great one-two punch for dispelling the easiest, most performative route Anderson could’ve taken. She’s an utterly unvarnished presence. The desire for isolation Billy describes isn’t given a detailed backstory, but Anderson’s not playing a fright queen who lost her marbles. She’s taken a long road to get to this point, but she’s at peace with this life, and now she might have company to share it with.
Much like Jack Haven in I Saw the TV Glow, Anderson does some of her most stirring work when watching herself, either acting onscreen or when she recalls looking at her own image from outside herself. Billy’s gaze once she starts their private screening of Camp Miasma begins is as arresting as Maddy’s tear-stricken face when watching The Pink Opaque. It's triking in how intensely Anderson connects to what she’s watching without being totally transparent. Dialogue before and after this sequence suggests any possible number of conflicted responses, yet Anderson’s knowing excitement when she promises Kris the chance to watch her personal film stock doesn’t prepare us for this gaze. All that inchoate energy, and she’s still able to get a laugh from telling Kris to shut up before a big scene starts.
Anderson's asides are just as rich as her showcase monologues - I’ve thought every day about the way she quietly tosses out the “Camp Miasma was based on a real serial killer” trivia while Einbinder is going on about some nonsense. Also like Haven, Anderson straddles the line between being a leading or supporting role in ways that stymie easy categorization, though I’m psyched that the Gothams put her in the Lead category. Billy never really achieves the same subjective point of view from the camera or script as Kris, yet, in Anderson’s hands, she’s far more than a simple object of fascination or steward for someone else’s journey.
It’s miraculous, deeply committed work, essential to making the cathartically blood-soaked finale succeed even when she’s away from the action. The climax of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a summation of all the psychological, libidinal, mostly funny impulses of the previous ninety minutes and change with Schoenbrun seeing no need to resolve the dissonances between fantasy play and the dawn of a new day. The awakenings Kris and Billy have ushered together are real, the thrills and chills and sloppy removal of skewers from heaving bosoms for the sake of keeping Little Death under control. And if their futures hold many, many more nights of similar escapades, so be it.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is currently available to buy or rent on most digital platforms, and can be streamed on MUBI.