TL;DR: Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma is a bloody, funny, very strange horror movie about the obsession people develop with old slasher movies, and it gets much weirder than the title suggests - I loved the performances, the ridiculous gore and the way it manages to make fun of horror while clearly loving it at the same time.
Plot
A director making a slasher sequel becomes obsessed with casting the original film's 'final girl,' leading both women into psychological and sexual chaos.
This Is One Very Strange Horror Movie
Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma is weird.
But it's also funny, bloody, sexy, occasionally uncomfortable, surprisingly sweet, and full of the kind of ridiculous horror movie nonsense a horror fan should love, and it's fair to say I liked it a lot, where Jane Schoenbrun has made a movie that clearly comes from someone who has spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about horror movies and the effect they can have on people, and it isn't just interested in slashers as entertainment either, it gets into the way people attach themselves to fictional characters, old franchises and the movies they watched when they were younger.
Thankfully, it does this without turning into one of those movies where everybody spends two hours explaining what the movie is supposedly about, as there are ideas here, obviously, but Camp Miasma is much more interested in having fun with them.
And thank God for that.
The Gore Is Completely Ridiculous
The gore in this movie is absolutely stupid, and I obviously mean that as a compliment, where the first big splash of blood gives you a pretty good idea of what Schoenbrun is doing, so it certainly isn't a film that is trying to convince you that this is what would actually happen if someone got murdered with a knife, as it just wants the blood to fly everywhere because, well, why the hell not?
I also loved Little Death, the killer at the center of the fictional Camp Miasma movies, as the design is yet again wonderfully ridiculous, and Jack Haven clearly understands that this character needs to be both stupid and threatening, and it worked brilliantly.
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson Are Fantastic
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson are the heartbaet of the film though, and both are excellent as well - Einbinder gives Kris this nervous, awkward energy that I really liked, someone who is clearly obsessed with horror, but the performance never turns into the annoying version of the "superfan" character that we've seen about a thousand times.
She's excited by the things she loves, she gets carried away, she says some ridiculous things, and she has an almost embarrassing amount of emotional investment in Camp Miasma, which I found pretty funny because horror fans can absolutely be like that.
Then there's Anderson, who is having a great time here - Billy is strange, theatrical and completely wrapped up in her history with the franchise, and there is something genuinely sad underneath all of the weirdness too.
Also, the chemistry between Anderson and Einbinder is really good, and their scenes together can be funny and uncomfortable, then suddenly become surprisingly intimate, featuring a real warmth between them, which makes some of the stranger moments work even better.
Read some more horror movie content:
The Movie Has a Lot to Say About Horror Fans
This is a movie that clearly understands that horror fans can love something while also knowing it's full of problems - a lot of older horror movies were pretty horrible when it came to women, queer characters and anyone who didn't fit neatly into the world the films were presenting, but at the same time, those exact movies could mean something incredibly important to the people watching them - that's a complicated thing, and Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma doesn't pretend there's an easy answer.
The fictional Camp Miasma franchise is clearly full of all the usual slasher nonsense, but it has also become meaningful to Kris, so the movie understands that both things can be true, as you can look back at an old horror film and think, "Jesus, this hasn't aged well," while also remembering exactly how you felt when you first watched it.
So even though the film does make fun of this, sometimes brutally, but there is also real affection underneath the jokes, and it feels like it was made by people who actually enjoy horror movies rather than people who have decided horror movies are a convenient thing to mock.
There are also a lot of references here - probably more than I caught - as the movie throws around nods to famous horror films, particularly the big slasher movies that defined the '80s and '90s, where some of them are subtle, some really aren't, but I suspect horror fans who have watched absolutely everything will have a great time spotting them.
The Fictional Camp Miasma Franchise Is Also Convincing
Schoenbrun has clearly thought about what these movies would actually look and feel like, as there are moments where the fake films feel like something that could have been sitting on a video store shelf next to Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, and I will say that's one of the cleverest parts of the whole thing here - the movie creates a fake horror history and then expects us to accept that these characters have been living with it for decades, and you do.
The movie also takes some pretty good shots at Hollywood, featuring scenes involving Kris trying to get people to understand what she wants to do with the Camp Miasma franchise, and the responses she gets are painfully familiar, with the ridiculous language people use when they're trying to make a horror movie sound respectable to people who probably don't even like horror.
There are also some great jokes about the way studios treat old franchises, particularly the idea that you can take something that mattered to people decades ago, throw a bunch of new ideas at it, and then hope nobody gets angry.
Good luck with that, because as we know, horror fans are famously reasonable people....
The Movie Gets Much Stranger as It Goes Along
The second half of Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma gets increasingly strange, where it starts playing around more with reality, fiction and the relationship between the people who make horror movies and the characters inside them, but I don't want to explain exactly where it goes because that would take some of the fun out of it.
What I will say is that the movie becomes much more than a slasher parody, with scenes where I was laughing at how ridiculous everything had become, followed by moments that were actually quite emotional.
One minute you're watching an absurd killer massacre people while blood is flying everywhere, and the next you're watching two characters have a genuinely tender moment, and this film has this sort of strange internal logic, and once you accept that, the increasingly bizarre turns become easier to go along with.
This Is Horror Made for People Who Love Horror
I do think Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma works best when you stop trying to figure out exactly what category it belongs in - it's a slasher, it's a comedy, it's a romance, and it's a weird character movie.
It's also a movie about movies, which can be an absolutely unbearable thing when done badly, but not here, because Schoenbrun doesn't seem interested in showing off, as while it has some strange ideas, it also genuinely feels like something made by a horror fan who wanted to mess around with the genre.
The best thing I can say about it is that it can laugh at horror while still treating horror as something that actually matters.
Final Thoughts
Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma is bloody, funny, strange and much more emotional than I expected it to be, and I had a genuinely good time with this - highly recommended, especially for horror fans who don't mind their slashers getting very, very weird.
