Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Writer: Jane Schoenbrun
Cast: Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, Eva Victor, Jack Haven.
Rating: 5/5
Was it Mark Rothko who said he was only interested in basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy and doom? (Look, forget about the em-dash and the group of threes; some things predate AI, okay?). Rothko could go and say something clear and brutal and represent it with blotched, colourful squares on a canvas. Beautiful colourful squares on a canvas. Tragic, ecstatic, even dooming.
I say this because I think we owe it to ourselves as art enjoyers to challenge our expectations on every single film we see. Art, after all, is only worth it if it taps into the raw, blotched square of human emotion, not when it’s presented in palatable three-act structures. Feel it, dammit.
The intrepid Jane Schoenbrun is the kind of filmmaker willing to test Rothko’s rule. Their films dive into a deep pit of human ethos, without being constrained by trifling things like typical narrative structure and traditional hero journeys.
Her first We’re All Going To The World’s Fair was a phantasmagoric coming-of-age psychological horror that started Schoenbrun’s conversation on modern disenfranchised youth and questioning concepts of identity (Schoenbrun themselves identify as trans and non-binary), but it was in their sophomore magnum opus, I Saw The TV Glow, that their style was perfected.
TV Glow was a beautiful piece of moody work, owing a lot to David Lynch and a childhood watching a lot of cheesy, nerdy television. But beneath its cryptic scripture, it did something most films don’t dare to do anymore – it made us feel very strong emotions.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (henceforth just Camp Miasma) takes from TV Glow the respect for nostalgia, but it’s confidently a completely different film. It’s a comedy, to begin with, that deconstructs the 80s slasher horror genre with more reverence than Scary Movie. The opening credits are an adorable montage of memorabilia of Camp Miasma, a fictitious franchise in the guise of Friday the 13th. We see VHS tapes piling up, newspaper clippings, merchandise and the rise and fall of what was once a cult series, eventually ending as a piece of trivial pop culture forgotten by time.
That is until the montage shows us a young, up-and-coming filmmaker, Kris (Hannah Einbinder), who is hired to revitalise the franchise with maybe a remake, maybe a legacy sequel, definitely a cash-grab for a film studio capitalising on a recognisable IP.
As research, Kris travels to the Pacific Northwest, where the original film was made, to interview the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the first Camp Miasma film, who retired from acting after the experience and now lives in the abandoned set of the film, surrounded by memorabilia and film reels.
For Kris, this is not just a chance to meet someone she admires; she recognises Billy’s role in Camp Miasma as part of her sexual awakening into bisexuality. But for Billy, the experience was different; something that happened on set when she was a young, inexperienced actress was both traumatic and exciting — ecstasy and doom.
The lore of Camp Miasma revolves around its killer. Little Death (Jack Haven), a mysterious bully trans person who lives under the lake, and comes to land wearing a giant cube helmet reminiscent of an air vent, sporting a giant spear it uses to kill unsuspecting local teens.
As Kris and Billy get closer, the borders between what’s real and what’s the film (or the film within the film) blur out, where Little Death may indeed be living under that lake, and his awakening signals a new film being made.
Kris is a film nerd with a conflicting position about the act of sex. The film’s best scene, representing a stylised killing spree to the tune of The Counting Crows’ Long December (Schoenbrun does nostalgia like no one else) and shot like an old Michel Gondry music video, ends with Billy’s character having an orgasm, which Kris sees as an enticing idea she likes to explore, and Billy recognises as the traumatic experience that shaped her.
Schoenbrun navigates the complicated themes of exploitation and titillation with impressive know-how and respect. Never accusing those who are excited by it, nor shaming those who suffered.
Anderson is stellar as the tragic Billy, like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, which the film openly references twice, but she reminded me of Edie Bouvier, the real-life eccentric recluse who lived with her mother in a derelict mansion in the 1970s. She has this terrific Southern accent that makes it like Billy is constantly acting, even when she’s alone in the middle of all her memories.
But it’s easy to see why Kris fell in love with her. Schoenbrun shoots Anderson like a candle that refuses to go out, a resilient force of nature that continues to emanate eroticism to anyone willing to indulge in it.
On their third picture, Schoenbrun breaks the mould of what is expected from a horror comedy. The ending is an ecstatic, hilarious gag that brings together all the supporting cast (including Dylan Baker as a film producer and Sarah Sherman as a sycophantic agent) in a feast of blood that ends, as expected, in an orgasm. Or, a little death …
I wish more films were like this. Tragedy, ecstasy and doom, as Rothko said. But I’m glad Schoenbrun has the discernment to complement the thought with another basic human emotion – content.
A beautiful and complex film that is better enjoyed by letting oneself be swept by emotions. Sometimes a love letter to cult cinema, sometimes an exploration of identity and trauma, but all of it sexy.
