Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is not so much a horror movie as it is a movie about horror, how it warps us, consumes us, and rewires the synapses of our brains into something so elemental that it teases the realm of fetish. The things we love, as well as the people, are often not up to our choosing; these decisions have been made long before we had the cognizance to understand the roots being planted in our minds, whose fruit would not flower until we had grown to dismiss our most primal needs in favor of normality, of simple answers for unanswerable questions. As it is with gender and sexual preference, the same can be said for the stories we consume and the movies that give our lives meaning; we are not the sculptors so much as the clay. Schoenbrun has made a cottage industry of exploring the spaces where queerness, identity, and media cross-pollinate and create colors previously unexamined. Their former film “I Saw The TV Glow” presented a neon-drenched world of existential angst and horror that was as profound as it was devastating. “Camp Miasma” is, on the one hand, more gore-soaked than “TV Glow” and yet also more joyful; a celebration of inhibitions being quashed in favor of radical self-acceptance and the iridescent warmth of finding someone whose kinks, both intellectual and otherwise, directly align with the parts of yourself you’ve hidden from the world. We like to be high-minded about the art that irradiates our souls; the songs that make us cry and feel closer to some unknowable being at the center of all knowledge or the poetry that has made full the hearts of wayward lovers for centuries. But what about those of us who find calm, even rapture, in the bloodletting of fictional bimbos and dullards, the slashing of artificial throats in ecstasy, or the vengeful rampages of wronged supernatural beings with razor-sharp implements of impalement? Is it wrong to love these things, to be turned on by them, to find others who feel the same way and allow yourselves to play the part of victim together? Maybe in the cold light of day, among the prying eyes of the rational, it is. But what about in the dark of a movie theater, where dreams are shared in a secret language of the initiated, whispered as sweet nothings against the backing track of the projector’s click and the succulence of freshly buttered popcorn? There is truth to be found there, in that space where the soft meets the brutal, the flesh meets the fluid, where the monsters without their masks are let loose to run rampant and be freely who they always were. Thankfully, that place, where there is no shame and like minds are eagerly skewered, has a name: Camp Miasma.
“Camp Miasma” is a journey of self-discovery for the bookish filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) as she ventures North from Los Angeles to meet with the reclusive star of the long-in-the-tooth slasher horror franchise. Kris is a Sundance Film Festival darling whose high-minded critique of voyeuristic horror, described as “Psycho from the perspective of the shower curtain,” has landed her the chance of rebooting the “Camp Miasma” series for a new generation; a tall order but one she is eager to take on. For her, “Camp Miasma” is a guilty pleasure; a film series she latched onto as a too-young girl but one that she also understands to be highly problematic, transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic. Still, she can’t help herself when she’s at a gas station and sees a DVD copy of “Camp Miasma VI” on the spinner rack. She snags a copy and asks the creepy proprietor of her hotel if he has a DVD player she can borrow. Sitting alone in her lonely hotel room, surrounded by gas station candy and popcorn, watching as the slasher icon of “Camp Miasma,” known as Little Death, slices and dices his way through sex eager teenagers, the bespectacled and awkward Kris seems enveloped in a calm, a cozy blanket of familiar horrors that tickle the nascent parts of her brain where we all feel the most at home. She reaches her destination, the abandoned sleep-away camp buried in snow where they filmed the first movie once upon a time, and meets Billy (Gillian Anderson in fully regal Dolly Parton mode), the original “Miasma” final girl. Kris tries to pitch the aging ingenue on being a part of her reboot. But for Billy, the story of Little Death never ended. He’s still down there, she says, in the lake beside the camp. There’s a hole in the lake, deep down, you see, where the movies come from; and he’s soon to be resurrected once again to bathe in the blood of his victims. While unsure if Billy has gone full “Sunset Boulevard” or if she is just teasing her, Kris becomes enraptured with the former star; seduced by her honesty, her oddity, and her infectious way of tickling that itch that only gets scratched when watching “Camp Miasma” movies. As she comes to learn, her time in “Camp Miasma” is more than a sales pitch; it’s an audition for a role she never knew she was meant to play- a character in the latest movie where Little Death is the filmmaker tasking her with giving herself over to the sweet release of death, thereby unlocking a world beyond her wildest imaginings. It may be all make-believe, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
“Camp Miasma” is a love story, full stop; of movies, of people, of the Little Deaths that exist in our minds and are eager to emerge. For Kris, the first step along this path of seduction is the movies themselves; the fetishization of old VHS tapes, the shock of cool metal on a film reel, and the sweetness of two hands touching as they reach into the same bag of overpriced candy. Schoenbrun is unapologetic about presenting her own love language as cinema; framing Kris as an eager cinephile who gleefully whispers to Billy that there is a ‘split diopter’ shot while watching “Camp Miasma” projected in the camp’s abandoned recreational space. For a significant portion of the film, we, the audience, are right beside Kris and Billy watching that old film – a knock-off of “Friday the 13th” – and witnessing it through the eyes of a devotee to the religion of “Little Death” and the woman whose entire life has become defined by it. There’s something intimate about watching a movie with another person; sharing in that communal experience and allowing it to wash over you in new and novel ways. It’s rare that a film allows an audience to simply exist in a separate fictional space, a movie within a movie, alongside the characters for such a prolonged period of time as we do here. In this segment of the film, we learn the backstory of the fictional Little Death, a hyper-exaggerated transphobic stereotype who was drowned by fellow campers because they “freaked out” while swimming. But, of course, we know the truth even if the counselor recounting the story beside the campfire doesn’t. Little Death was not a monster but a person, misunderstood for who they were and punished for it by those who easily retain their normalcy as a badge of honor. Still, this allows the bloody vengeance of the long-ago maligned child, now wearing a vent-like mask and wielding a phallic spear, to rampage through the horde of counselors; not so much killing as dancing, spinning, and pinwheeling in uninhibited bliss. This sequence, a long-take murder montage, is one of Schoenbrun’s most striking and celebratory, allowing the audience to witness Little Death as our hero, brutally dismantling the structures that had feared and murdered him. I can see why Kris loves these movies so much. That’s the thing about horror: it’s not so much about what happens as how you look at it; perspective is key, who you identify with and why. Roger Ebert once said that “movies were like a machine that generates empathy,” and watching a film alongside our characters provides that intimacy in spades; a road map for the coupling and self-discovery to come.
“Camp Miasma” is a movie that has to be experienced to be understood, and perhaps won’t be by most audience goers walking in expecting a traditional, or even revisionist, slasher film. That is not what Schoenbrun is aiming at, and thankfully not because what they present for us instead is something wholly unique and bespoke; a message meant to be deciphered by those with the ears to hear or the willingness to accept that the crunchy parts of ourselves are as worthy as the camera-ready ones. Making a movie, at its purest form, is not unlike sending an alien signal into the vastness of the cosmos, Voyager-style, praying that one day someone will hear it, read it, and find connection in an eternity of night. Movies speak through time, as does love. They are not meant for now; they are meant for forever, transcending physical space and existing as something beyond. That counts double for the outsider art, the trash cinema, the films which were once banned for perverting a generation with their sex, their violence, and their willingness to stare into the face of death without blinking. Reason has little to do with it. Intellectualizing it only backs up the flow; it doesn’t make it stop. Embracing those things- who you are and who or what you love- is freedom. A movie is never as good as the conversation after, the meeting of minds and the melding of souls in the quiet moments when the credits begin to roll and the high of existing in another reality as another person fades to black. It’s not about the camera, the celluloid, or the popcorn. It’s about the Little Deaths you share along the way. At the end of the day, as Billie whispers in Kris’ ear, “it’s all play”, and then you die; such is it in sex and life. So you may as well grab a pile of candy and enjoy the show.
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is a queer delight, brimming with subtextual joy and sexual tension eagerly waiting to be sliced open. Jane Schoenbrun’s voice is one desperately needed not only on movie screens but in the hearts and minds of a generation whose identity is being rejected, attacked, and vilified. Cinema can be a place of revolution, but it can also be a respite, a calm, a dark cavern where love wills out in the end for everyone. “Camp Miasma” can be that place, and I am so very glad that it exists.
Visit Camp.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is playing at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place and The Broad Theater.
