{"id":624088,"date":"2026-08-06T19:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/624088\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T19:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:36:12","slug":"camp-miasma-review-horror-becomes-a-doorway-to-liberation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/624088\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Camp Miasma’ review: Horror becomes a doorway to liberation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma\u201d is a witty, gory slasher-romance that feels so personal to writer-director Jane Schoenbrun<\/a> that they\u2019ve essentially sliced out their soul and smeared it on the screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHacks\u2019\u201d Hannah Einbinder<\/a> plays a rising director named Kris, a Sundance darling and Schoenbrun avatar of sorts who wants to convince a long-forgotten scream queen named Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson<\/a>) to star in her next movie. It\u2019s a resurrection of the fictitious \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d franchise, a hack-\u2019em-up about hormonal camp counselors slaughtered by a gender-bending, spear-wielding killer called Little Death, who has an air-conditioning vent for a face. (The reason why sort of makes sense when you see his lair.) Billy played the final girl in the 1983 original film, then disappeared. And so Kris heads out to Billy\u2019s snowbound hideaway \u2014 which just so happens to be where the movie was shot.<\/p>\n

Young Billy (a riveting Amanda Fix<\/a>) imprinted on Kris in a way she can\u2019t articulate. Smoking weed with the real woman will hopefully help. Anderson\u2019s Billy steps out of the shadows with a full face of femme fatale makeup and a syrupy Dolly Parton drawl, promptly serving Kris enough fried chicken to feed a bobsled team. Has Anderson ever had more fun onscreen? Her performance presents as camp, but her dynamic range of loud cackles and quiet glances is fabulous.<\/p>\n

Acting in a film within a film, Fix\u2019s version of teenage Billy is so nervous it seems impossible she\u2019ll become Anderson\u2019s diva. You can practically hear the girl\u2019s heart beating so loud that it breaks your own. The two Billys almost snatch the movie from under its lead. But then toward the climax, Einbinder has a powerful close-up that puts the film back in her pocket. (Metaphorically, that is \u2014 by then, her character isn\u2019t wearing any pants.)<\/p>\n

Kris\u2019 breakout movie was a high-concept inversion of \u201cPsycho\u201d<\/a> told through the shower curtain\u2019s POV. Yet she\u2019s well aware that the studio hired her to rescue the \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d franchise not for her genius but because she\u2019s queer and the internet has deemed Little Death \u201cproblematic.\u201d The satirical scenes of Kris\u2019 agent (Sarah Sherman<\/a>) getting annoyed that her client can\u2019t pitch a four-quadrant movie are hilarious while also ringing of truth. <\/p>\n

Likewise, Schoenbrun specializes in zeitgeisty fables about 21st century isolation. Their own debut, the 2021 micro-budget internet thriller \u201cWe\u2019re All Going to the World\u2019s Fair,\u201d<\/a> was simultaneously mesmerizing and tedious, a mental breakdown that burrowed so deeply inside its own world that several COVID-era high schoolers I know felt like it had been made just for them.<\/p>\n

A strange thing about Schoenbrun is that even when I haven\u2019t liked their work, I\u2019ve left the theater certain that I just watched what will be someone else\u2019s favorite film of all time. (The affectless disassociation of 2024\u2019s \u201cI Saw the TV Glow\u201d<\/a> drove me bonkers.) Yet \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d finds Schoenbrun bravely opening up and getting vulnerable. It\u2019s not just a lament about loneliness; it\u2019s a challenge to change your perspective and maybe your life. <\/p>\n

I suspect Schoenbrun could deliver a five-hour TED Talk on the pop cultural kitsch of \u201cFriday the 13th\u2019s\u201d Jason Voorhees<\/a>. They\u2019re so fluent in how Hollywood squeezes the fun out of a franchise that they can convey \u201cCamp Miasma\u2019s\u201d descent into schlock in a sprightly opening montage that sees Little Death become a trading card, a bobblehead, an 8-bit video game, an anti-drug spokesman and a novelty rapper. Over 13 sequels, the character\u2019s trail of nubile corpses stretches from Manhattan to Mars to Quibi.<\/p>\n

Kris pops in a disc of \u201cCamp Miasma\u2019s\u201d tawdry 2008 reboot, which cinematographer Eric Yue<\/a> makes look as flat as the discounted DVD. As that movie\u2019s disposable bimbo strips off her top, the score cranks up a porno-chic song and Kris scribbles the word \u201cdesire\u201d in her notebook in all caps. But the contrast between that sham seduction footage and a 35mm reel of the original \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d is like night and day \u2014 or rather, trash and art. Kris and Billy watch that one together in an intimate sleepover, sinking into the murky texture of a scene in which the virginal actor allowed a jerk to take off her clothes.<\/p>\n

Schoenbrun loves the movie-ness of movies. You can see their devotion in outdoor backdrops that are deliriously false, in sight gags that reference Cronenberg and Carpenter or in production design that includes the perfect nostalgic \u201990s video store carpet. Inside Billy\u2019s private movie theater, the projector beams down on the back of Anderson\u2019s head like that infamous Nicole Kidman AMC promo<\/a>. Maybe I\u2019m loopy, but I\u2019d even swear the entrance to Billy\u2019s screening room has a handmade mural of the Roku City screensaver<\/a>. Watch for clues when the storyline we\u2019re watching becomes its own nested narrative. <\/p>\n

Horror fans waiting for jump scares will be thwarted. At least there are several sequences of macabre murder-comedy with blood geysers shooting up to the sky and a tracking shot through a killing spree that\u2019s a riot. The soundtrack sets a more accurate tone right away with a gentle cover of R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cNightswimming\u201d<\/a> that segues into Alex G\u2019s dreamy synths. Yet Schoenbrun\u2019s needle drops also seem to have been chosen to make the audience chuckle. A massacre set to the Counting Crows\u2019<\/a> piano-and-accordion ballad \u201cA Long December\u201d is bizarre. (The only excuse I can think of is that Little Death hibernates at the bottom of a frozen lake?)<\/p>\n

It feels like a magic trick when the film finally reveals where it\u2019s going. \u201cTeenage Sex and Death\u201d is about climbing out of your head, admitting what you want and allowing yourself to enjoy it. Sexually, yes \u2014 that\u2019s right in the title \u2014 and creatively, too, as Schoenbrun wants us to keep loving movies that make us squirm. <\/p>\n

Lately, it\u2019s been hard to talk about difficult art, with culture warriors deeming entire filmographies unworthy of enjoyment. People have gotten so used to preemptively apologizing for what they like that their mea culpas feel as reflexive as a sneeze. But Schoenbrun sticks up for the right to forgive a movie\u2019s flaws. Here, when Kris anxiously whispers that a scene in the first \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d is transphobic, Billy gives her a shush.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all got our kinks, including ones for canceled flicks. (I still adore \u201cRevenge of the Nerds\u201d<\/a> despite its god-awful rape joke.) Kris can intellectualize her \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d fandom all she wants. But Billy counters that the appeal of \u201cCamp Miasma\u201d is simple: \u201cIt\u2019s flesh and fluids,\u201d she says. And since she\u2019s still living in it, we believe her.<\/p>\n

‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’<\/p>\n

Rated:<\/b> R, for bloody violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and some language<\/p>\n

Running time:<\/b> 1 hour, 52 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing:<\/b> Opening Friday, Aug. 7 in limited release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma\u201d is a witty, gory slasher-romance that feels so personal to writer-director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[595,263627,263625,8774,18,117,42854,597,23268,89746,137,19,17,84166,263628,1382,327,263629,263626,263630],"class_list":["post-624088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-art","tag-billy-presley","tag-camp-miasma","tag-character","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-face","tag-film","tag-franchise","tag-gillian-anderson","tag-heart","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kris","tag-little-death","tag-movie","tag-movies","tag-satirical-scene","tag-schoenbrun-avatar","tag-teenage-sex"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117050250769773045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}