Jane Schoenbrun makes wild, gloriously weird, infinitely rewatchable films. After their haunting coming-of-age debut, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, they made an even bigger splash with I Saw The TV Glow, the instantly cult head-spinner about two teens who become obsessed with a supernatural TV show. Now, they’ve upped the ante once again, with a yet more ambitious, movie star-led expansion of their mind-boggling cinematic universe: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
This new addition to their oeuvre opens up their world from cramped rooms and bright screens to vast landscapes and other-worldly dimensions – it’s a big swing, certainly, but one which also results in something messier, shaggier and knottier than TV Glow. It’s guaranteed to be catnip for fans, just as it’s likely to alienate newcomers to Schoenbrun’s work, who may find their last project, strange though it is, more easily digestible than this one.
Whatever its flaws, the concept this time around is a compelling one. The film opens with a kind of Lynchian framing device – the sense that you’re watching a film within a film – after which we transition into a zippy opening credits sequence which sets up the premise: the Camp Miasma slasher movies were an ’80s touchstone, but after one too many pointless remakes, they seem to be dead and buried. That is, until a promising young director, Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is tasked with resurrecting the franchise with a fresh spin on the concept.
When we first meet her, she’s on her way to see Billy (Gillian Anderson), the very first Miasma movie’s captivating final girl who, it turns out, still lives on the hallucinatory abandoned set of the original film. It’s an eerie nightmare complete with giant painted backdrops and creaky old-school projectors, and Billy is the supremely glamorous Norma Desmond figure sitting amongst them and fading into obscurity.
With her purring Southern drawl and dreamy-eyed monologues, there’s a touch of Blanche DuBois to Billy, too, as she asks Kris to make herself at home, and Kris, in turn, pitches her the vision for the new Miasma. As a queer filmmaker, she’s fascinated by the original Miasma lore: the killer at its centre, who is massacring teens at camp, wields a spear, wears a mask in the shape of an air vent, and is named Little Death (memorably played here by TV Glow’s lead, Jack Haven). Once a trans teen freely exploring their gender identity, they morph into the feared creature living at the bottom of the nearby lake, ready to rise at a moment’s notice and unleash their vengeance. What does it mean, Kris wonders, for her to be reimagining this painful, highly problematic tale?
She spends the night, and Kris and Billy grow closer, emotionally and romantically. Kris opens up about her intimacy issues, Billy shares snatches of her own past, and the pair revisit the original Miasma movie. Then, we step inside that ’80s fever dream and learn what really happened on set.
Schoenbrun’s direction is assured throughout, and their world-building as meticulous as ever, with much delightful revelling in nostalgic (and often analogue) pleasures: intricate ’80s merch, VHS tapes, DVD players which need to be unearthed and dusted off, the joy of stocking up on chocolate and popcorn and curling up to watch a scary movie you’ve already seen a thousand times.
This is a highly cine-literate piece of work, too, cluttered with references and Easter eggs which nod to everything from The Shining to Halloween. Some – for instance, the detail that Kris’s hit first film is a retelling of Psycho from the perspective of the shower curtain – are hilarious, while others, over time, begin to grate a little, weighing the film down with its extensive genre trappings and persistent knowingness.
Like TV Glow, though, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’s themes are fully engrossing: notions of trauma leading you to bury your sexual desires deep within yourself; falling into dissociative states (echoed by many of the distanced wide shots through which we observe Little Death); and a precise skewering of the history of horror movies which have leaned into misogyny, exploitation and transphobia. Miasma is at its best when examining the pain of this legacy alongside the confusing, titillating, exhilarating experience of consuming many of these films.
But, while TV Glow delivered twists and turns at a more consistent pace, Miasma doesn’t fully let rip until the film’s final scenes. We spend a little too long in the ’80s flashback (though bonus points, certainly, for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, mohawk-sporting Eva Victor); there’s a Zoom sequence which felt a little overdone; and when the blood does finally start to flow, I found myself yearning for something funnier, gorier, scarier, sexier and more uninhibited.
In the end, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma doesn’t fully deliver on the provocations of its title. Its relative restraint is entirely intentional, but it’s also what makes it feel slightly undercooked, whereas I Saw The TV Glow, imperfections and all, feels more like a complete entity. Still, this is a thrillingly surreal, layered and unquestionably audacious addition to Schoenbrun’s filmography, and as a glimpse of bigger, bolder things to come, it’s incredibly promising. And, as was the case for TV Glow, I personally can’t wait for the merch to drop.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will be in cinemas from 21 August.
%2520LES%2520FILMS%2520PELLEAS.jpg)
