How easily can we find ourselves transported from reality into fantasy? It’s this act of magic that Jane Schoenbrun explores in their latest film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. And this immaculately titled slasher wastes no time delving right into the potential escape the viewer of a film faces anytime we decide to give ourselves over to cinema. It couldn’t be more apparent from the opening sequence; Schoenbrun places their viewer in the middle of a bustling film set. The shot is from a handheld point-of-view. The main question lingering is whose POV are we supposed to be experiencing? A long lineage of genre films leads us to the obvious answer: between the meandering pace and heavy breathing, it’s that of the killer’s POV. The only issue with that assessment is nobody seems to be afraid of what’s coming right towards them. Instead, the camera we are practically within is handed off to somebody else, at which point the audience is rooted firmly into place. We’re now sitting atop a tripod facing a wide open field of grass and trees, realizing now that we were actually taking the place of the camera the entire time. It’s through our eyes, and the baggage of so many great cinematic examples, that we found this identity. And from here, a quick edit drops us into what appears to be an actual scene of a horror film. Reality has instantaneously transformed into fiction with a single cut. And yet, wouldn’t this be indicative of the two being somewhat interchangeable?
Over the course of the next 100 minutes or so, Schoenbrun’s film takes on a transportative quality that aims to examine the intersecting spaces between reality and fiction. It’s all explored through Kris (Hannah Einbinder), an independent filmmaker potentially headed towards a massive new stage in her career. She’s been given the keys to the Camp Miasma IP under the guise of a studio reboot. While this is a fictional franchise, Schoenbrun doesn’t squander the opportunity they have created for themselves. Schoenbrun spends a ton of time steeping their audience in the expansive world of Camp Miasma. We are treated to an incredibly fun montage during the introductory credits, alongside plenty of asides throughout the film, examining the copious sequels, game adaptations, theater and fandom paraphernalia, and general horror iconography that imbue this film with a nostalgic quality. Schoenbrun clearly has a knack for mining personal experiences and memories surrounding specific pieces of art from their life, only to then transmute them onto a blank slate with each new film. In turn, their audience is able to easily latch onto this newly created lore and imagery. It creates the connections necessary for the remainder of the film to function in real time. It’s not just an impressive feat; it’s also wildly exciting. We might not have ever seen Little Death (Jack Haven) prior to this film, but we can fully understand the function they serve as a newly created horror icon.
So what exactly is that function of a character like Little Death? The same question can be posed towards Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and so on and so on. There are countless slasher icons in their own overstuffed franchises, each carrying a fair amount of baggage that has only gotten heavier over time. On the surface, slasher films exist as an easy way for studios to fill theaters. That’s not to diminish the subgenre in any sense, but more indicative of the notion that extreme violence and sex, two core facets of the genre, have always been easily marketable and always will be. But beyond those two facets of the genre, there lies so much space to be explored in between the lines of such thematic mainstays. It’s not surprising that horror, in general, often has so much cultural weight it carries along as time goes on. Horror has always been a genre that has been cleverly utilized to explore social issues bluntly and with immediacy. There are obvious nuances and allegories to be combed through, but at face value, slasher films most often focus on individuals that were treated cruelly and dealt tragic circumstances. At their core, certain horror icons such as Jason or newcomer Little Death, are characters carrying an immense amount of pain behind their often iconic costumes. There’s obviously something cathartic about seeing tragic figures take revenge as a way of coping with how their lives played out. No matter how much studios and toxic fandoms might want to ignore the often allegorical nature of films they claim to love and cherish, these characters and stories often stem from a place of pain and frustration. It can’t be ignored, and Camp Miasma attacks that lifetime of ignorance head on.
What’s most undeniable about this film is Schoenbrun’s adoration for the slasher as a whole. It is so obviously poking fun at every aspect of the genre, from its typical cinematic stylings to the story structures and physical settings. But it always comes across as a true love letter. There’s something so potent in witnessing Schoenbrun and return collaborator, Eric K. Yue as cinematographer, utilizing crash zooms and slow fades to immediately familiarize their audience with the foundational stylings of the films they are aiming to send up. In turn, it further assures the audience that we are in hands that are beyond capable. There’s a particular dollhouse quality to Camp Miasma which is simply fascinating to explore visually. The ways in which Schoenbrun chooses to tinge Kris and Billy’s (Gillian Anderson) experiences with a sense of cinematic fantasticalness is both pointed and telling of their experiences with art. It’s all completely in service of Schoenbrun’s distinct vision. In some ways, this film does feel like a bit of a departure from Schoenbrun’s previous film, the stellar I Saw The TV Glow. Yet both films are undeniably the works of an auteur who fully acknowledges the impact a lifetime of exploring art can have on the psyche.
We can give so much of ourselves over to the arts. It can often be a wildly exciting and rewarding experience which opens up the world entirely for discovery and exploration. And yet, it can also feel fundamentally detrimental to our experiences of feeling like a complete person. As Kris unpacks her own relationship to her work and the Camp Miasma franchise in particular, she describes cinema as a place for her to hide from all the emotions and connections she’s worried about. In turning to the beautiful embrace of art, specifically film, we can often find ourselves further and further removed from reality. In the case of the film, reality then becomes blurred in ways that are both frightening and fascinating. The exploration of Kris’ reality slowly becoming identical to that of her favorite slasher films makes for a deeply entertaining spectacle that’s as heady as it is masterful. One scene in particular sees Schoenbrun create an entire lifetime’s worth of slasher iconography in an extended sequence, yet all the while never loses sight of that imbued pain baked into the DNA of the slasher subgenre. There are certain links which are inextricable to horror, and ignoring them allows a sort of repression of freedom that is as cruel as it is confusing to so many who find themselves inherently attached to films like the ones Camp Miasma is dissecting. Ultimately, Schoenbrun has again proven themselves to be an artist that can very fluently analyze just what it is about art that audiences find themselves inherently captivated by, only to then flip it on its head for something that challenges the viewer while never losing sight of unbridled entertainment.