Schoenbrun's Camp Miasma Explores How Pop Culture Shapes Us
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Jane Schoenbrun's new film 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' centers Kris (Hannah Einbinder), a queer filmmaker hired to reboot the titular 1980s slasher franchise
- Gillian Anderson stars as Billy Presley, the reclusive actor from the original Camp Miasma who lives at the abandoned campground running a self-styled exposure therapy
- The in-universe Camp Miasma franchise is depicted as a once-promising 1980s slasher whose sequels sent the masked killer 'Little Death' to Manhattan, then space, in increasingly wacky installments
- The film opens as a Hollywood reboot satire — Kris tries to make a 'woke' version without alienating fans — but morphs into a surreal meditation on how trashy media can become intrinsic to a person's sense of self
- Kris watches the original film at her hotel, scribbling 'DESIRE' in her notepad during a sex scene, and eventually the killer Little Death physically emerges from the on-site lake, blurring fiction and reality
- Schoenbrun argues against endless meta-critique, concluding that viewers may be 'better off embracing how we feel' about pop culture rather than subjecting it to constant analysis
Why it matters: This is Schoenbrun's third feature after 'We're All Going to the World's Fair' and 'I Saw the TV Glow,' consolidating them as a defining indie voice interrogating screen culture's hold on identity. Pairing Gillian Anderson — herself a genre-TV legend — against Hannah Einbinder's nervous nerd filmmaker signals a serious indie-horror crossover with crossover casting appeal.
Ask SkimNews
