‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ and the Inherent Sensuality of Slashers

Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, begins with a film set, a geyser of blood, and an opening credit montage celebrating the fictional history of the titular franchise told via brief glimpses of news clippings, movie reviews, fan memorabilia, online retrospectives, a Funko Pop, etc. Camp Miasma’s pop cultural lifecycle is purposefully familiar. Its in-universe original transphobic (more on that later) installment followed a vengeful masked killer named Little Death, clad in a white jumpsuit and blocky air vent headgear, cutting their way through horny camp counselors before being banished once again to their purgatorial home at the bottom of a nearby lake. It’s all very Jason Voorhees meets Angela Baker. From there on, Camp Miasma follows a recognizable trajectory: Sequel after sequel spawns, each with diminishing critical and financial returns. At some point, Little Death even goes to space. Years later, queer bloggers debate the offensive tropes and undertones of the franchise. Schoenbrun knows horror history, and the ways in which Camp Miasma and Little Death slot so easily into the slasher subgenre is part of what sets up Teenage Sex and Death for success. There’s just one little detail that goes relatively unnoticed in this lore dump of a montage.

The original Camp Miasma movie was directed by Ray Blanchard. Yes, that Ray Blanchard, the infamous sexologist maybe most known for creating the backwards and misogynistic transsexual typology and the concept of “autogynephilia”: the belief that women attracted trans women experience sexual arousal by the idea of becoming or being women. (Whipping Girl author Julia Serano has written at length about the many issues with this concept and its role in anti-trans activism. In short, it makes sense that an act that’s as tied to gender and body as sex and sexuality would be an incredibly dysphoric experience for many trans women, so escape into an imagined less discomforting reality would feel necessary.) At first, this simply seems like a one-off gag, a dig at the original Camp Miasma’s particularly weird approach to gender (again more on that later) and an in-joke easter egg for the trans people in the audience. Except, it very much isn’t. While it never says so explicitly, Schoenbrun’s film is very much a rebuttal of the core ideas behind Blanchard’s worldview and is instead a loving embrace of the role that fantasy, imagination, and performance play in sex and sexuality regardless of gender.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows up-and-coming indie queer filmmaker Kris Williams (Hannah Einbender), as she struggles to find the hook for a studio-mandated reimagining of the Camp Miasma franchise. Kris, rightly, suspects the producers simply hired her because they want to use her queer identity to dilute potential criticisms of the original’s problematic elements. Kris isn’t interested in a simple retread or prequel though; instead their eyes are set on recruiting the series’ original final girl Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) to reprise her role. The issue is that Billy has retired from acting and public life, now spending all her days living in a luxurious cabin located on the property of the filming location of the original Camp Miasma. So, Kris is left with no other choice but to make the lengthy trek up to Billy’s secluded hideaway in the middle of winter to make her pitch. The woman they find though is a far cry from the shut-in starlet that many expect and the connection and chemistry between Kris and Billy soon becomes far more than that of a director and their potential star.

Tonally, Camp Miasma feels like a stark departure from Schoenbrun’s first two films. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is an anxiety-producing, understated thriller about finding connection and purpose in the hidden away corners of the internet, while I Saw The TV Glow is a devastating, existential portrait of the ways nostalgia can devour our sense of self. Both are horrific and heartbreaking in equal measure. In contrast, Camp Miasma is a buoyant, playful film that’s erotic, campy, and uproariously funny. It’s a mood maybe best displayed by Kris and Billy’s disarmingly sensual dinner time conversation over KFC takeout. (Trust me, you’ll never think of dipping sauce the same way.) Schoenbrun has made a sexy, blood-soaked crowd pleaser that deserves to be watched in a packed late-night showing with the loudest, gayest audience possible.

This isn’t to say that Schoenbrun’s latest is any less heady or intellectual than their last films. I’d argue Camp Miasma is maybe their most sophisticated work to date and the shift in tone simply showcases they know the genre they are playing in. With few exceptions, the slasher film is not a dread-inducing, can’t-sleep-at-night horror movie. No, slashers are a baser pleasure, concerned with bodily sensation and release rather than tickling the dark corners of your brain. Despite the clearly puritanical messaging boiling beneath much of the genre, the experience of watching Friday the 13th or its many imitators isn’t exactly a chaste one. Blood mixes with sweat, and bodies writhing with pleasure are just as common a sight as carved open corpses. Even the much-maligned jump-scare that these films employ ad nauseam relies on a buildup of tension and quick bodily release. I mean, there’s a reason the masked killer of the Camp Miasma franchise is called “Little Death.”

It’s this understanding of the inherent sensuality of the slasher genre that sets Schoenbrun’s film apart from the many meta slashers that have appeared over the last few decades. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma isn’t interested in identifying tropes or critiquing genre trends as much it is a movie about the sensations and fantasies that they evoke. Yes, Schoenbrun has Ray Blanchard’s Camp Miasma mirror Sleepaway Camp in its blatant discomfort of anything or anyone that exists outside of a clear gender/sexual binary, but its transphobia is so blatant and absurd that it almost ceases to be a point of discussion. Little Death, played by Jack Haven, was a former Miasma camper who was raised by two “hermaphrodite” parents to be a “different gender every day of the week,” whose death by drowning is treated by the movie-within-a-movie as an inevitable and obvious outcome to daring to exist in a queer body. When Kris and Billy finally sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma together, Kris is quickly shushed when they try to point out the transphobic tropes unfolding on screen. We don’t need to be reminded. Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws is almost 35-years-old. The offensive subtext is just full-on text. Blanchard’s cartoonishly reductive and offensive thinking is apparent to anyone who is willing to think on it for more than two seconds.

While Schoenbrun does allow Little Death one gloriously choreographed and cathartic kill spree set to Counting Crows, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma isn’t a story of queer reclamation either. If anything, that’s the route Kris’s grossly cynical producers would want a film like this to take. Instead, what interests Kris (and the movie itself) is the split-second moment in the original film when an approaching Little Death is reflected in Billy Presley’s eyes as her character loses her virginity. Where exactly Schoenbrun takes Kris’s fascination with this image is an experience I wouldn’t dare spoil in this review, but it’s this fascination with the artifice of death and sex that Camp Miasma truly comes to life. Kris’s sex life is not so much a source of repression as it is dissatisfaction and frustration. Her long-term partner seems much more interested in their boyfriend, a long-haired himbo appropriately named Thor, but her sexual blockage sits much deeper in an inherent disconnect between her body and pleasure. Orgasm is only achievable through a combination of disassociation and fantasy. Neither Kris nor Schoenbrun call this experience “dysphoria,” but I’ve rarely seen a better depiction or description of navigating the maddening combination of discomfort and pleasure that comes with sex in a trans body. Escape into fantasy, into play, or into cinematic horror becomes the key to climax. The surprisingly joyful emotional arc of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma comes in Kris finding someone who not only understands their sexual needs but is prepared to meet them. The result is sexy and cathartic in ways that would give Ray Blanchard a heart attack.

I would love to gush about the many campy, erotic, and thrilling delights of Schoenbrun’s latest (I’ve barely even talked about how damn good Gillian Anderson is in it), but to say too much more would rob you of the chance to witness this disarmingly uplifting slasher-sex romp for yourself. Like the many stab-happy movies it imitates, watching Camp Miasma is as much a physical experience as it is an intellectual one. Trust me, you deserve this release.