80s horror nostalgia and lesbianism deliver in Jane Schoenbrun’s latest gem.
It often happens, but a person would end up in the wrong theater, thinking that the movie they were supposed to see would suck. But since they’re in the wrong theater, they might be seeing the right movie after all. If “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” was playing the same month as “Scream 7” and that person walked into the former thinking they were supposed to see the latter, then this is the movie they should be seeing.
This is the latest surreal feature from “I Saw the TV Glow” filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun, and this one is even better than that film. They both have their own ways of representing nostalgia from different generations, but “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is a love letter to “Friday the 13th” and “Sunset Boulevard.” It’s kind of wickedly delightful in that combination, and throughout my viewing experience I was wondering why “Scream 7” couldn’t be like this film. It’s so funny, so honest, so nostalgic, and so stylishly directed with some painted mountain backgrounds.
There is a popular 80s horror movie called “Camp Miasma,” where characters are required to make stupid choices when a killer with an air vent head slaughters them with over the top bloody special effects. He’s called “Little Death” and some would call him “Air Vent Man.” There has been one popular entry after another (one of the posters has the tagline: “Now if it gets too real, you can always turn it off”), until the bad reviews kicked in on later installments, like “Friday the 13th” or “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
In a time of woke, a young queer filmmaker named Kris (Hannah Einbinder from “Hacks”) is asked by the studio to reboot “Camp Miasma,” and meets the original star of that film Billy (Gillian Anderson) on the original movie campsite. The aging star shares some similar traits as Norman Desmond with the head wrap, disposition, and exuberance. But instead of imprisoning Kris, they both become romantically involved, but in a more twisted fashion.
A good portion of the film-I’d say about 20 minutes or so-has Kris and Billy watching the original “Camp Miasma” on an old projector. We see Amanda Fix as the young Billy, Jack Haven as Little Death, Kevin MacDonald as a cop, and other names like Eva Victor, Zach Cherry, and Arthur Conti (“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”) rounding up its cast. Yes, the characters in this movie within a movie are required to make stupid choices, because instead of running away, they just stand there questioning the killer who is holding a spear. These are the kind of characters I should be panning if they were in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” where characters had to make dramatic pauses before dinosaurs could kill them. But this movie is a satire on the genre from back then. Way before Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson initiated the rules of surviving horror movies in “Scream.”
I didn’t recognize Einbinder as I was watching this film, but her taste in the movie within the movie and movie snacks began to delight me and her chemistry with the aging actress kept me thinking. Is she going to have the same fate as Joe Gillis? Probably not. And Anderson knows how to have fun acting like Norma Desmond in a slasher without being desperate or cynical. She plays it just right. Schoenbrun uses these two leads with examinations and originality-both of which speak about topics of lesbianism and identity. And whatever the reboot unfolds makes perfect sense, considering how the meta movie concept works.
Only a small segment in this movie is a little boring, but the rest of it isn’t. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is a general reminder of a lot of movies and topics, and we need those kinds of reminders to keep movies alive and to have people keep their values. Let’s get that projector rolling.
In Select Theaters This Friday
