After a Sundance breakout, Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is tapped by a studio to revive their schlocky slasher IP, “Camp Miasma.” Struggling to break the story, Kris travels to the wilds of Washington, where the original camp and its star, Billy (Gillian Anderson), reside. Over friend chicken, gummy candies, and a joint, the formalities of this business meeting slowly begin to bend, and Billy explains to Kris about the hole at the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.

Jane Schoenbrun writes and directs Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a dissertation of the foundational slasher films not only in the genre, but in their life lived through a screen. Running 112 minutes – 23 minutes longer than the average run time of the films which Schoenbrun is examining – the film is a true exercise in patience which can help general audiences to reconcile the film’s acclaim off of its Cannes debut while further hardening the sentiment that festival and critical darlings are championed by an insular and out-of-touch, elitist audience. With distribution being headed up by Mubi, Camp Miasma may escape some of that pushback, but being rolled out on a little more than 1,000 screens after a month’s long platform and social media campaign, this is hardly the esoteric title one needs to go hunting for, nor is it the sapphic, sensational, summer slasher the marketing is trying to push it as.

As a quick note, Camp Miasma will refer to Schoenbrun’s film as presented, whereas “Camp Miasma” will refer to the in-film IP franchise.

The film centers around Einbinder’s Kris, a not-so-subtle stand-in for the writer/director themselves, which is not a mark against the film, but it is enough to make this film about filmmaking just a little bit itchy for audiences, especially since – like what frustrates Billy in their meeting – we never get a decent sense of who Kris is beyond someone who will insufferably pre-quote a film or jump at the chance to point out a split diopter shot. The overarching underwriting in this film is something that holds it back on both a thematic level, but also on a scene-to-scene and character basis, too. Other than being Schoenbrun’s avatar, Kris is an enigma, and to give Camp Miasma the benefit of that doubt that it is more a queer reckoning than an actual horror film, having an unsteady, unsure, and unconfident main character lends itself to exploring these themes, if only Schoenbrun actually had the confidence themselves to commit to the ideas they tease at across the scope of the film.

Opposite her is the only slightly more sure of herself – at least on the page – but equally shrouded Billy. In the same way we struggle to see how Kris is taken seriously in the world of the film, we struggle to see how Billy has had such an impact, especially after learning she essentially went into retirement after the first “Camp Miasma” film, bought up the entire acreage of the summer camp, and became a reclusive single-subject and presumably zero-sales painter, but Schoenbrun tells us that she is basically Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard (1950), so that is the end-all, be-all of her characterization. Beyond that, she is asked to float around the frame like a phantom, and she fills the role as an alluring presence that is both slightly dangerous yet also slightly exciting quite well, but it is revealed to be all pretext and little substance, especially as the film wanes on.

Both women are born from interesting ideas and create a nice foil for each other; Kris, the mousey academic that gets off on pointing out the tropes and problematic aspects of the genre which the thornier Billy has made her living from and has no time nor interest in dissecting it through a modern lens. It is unfortunate, then, that these performers are saddled with such bumbling direction and scripting that they are not able to more fully enjoy the world presented on screen. Production Designers Matt Hyland and Brandon Tonner-Connolly have quite the job in bringing this faux franchise to life in a way that does not feel like simply retreading what Scream 2 (1997) has done with the in-universe “Stab” franchise. Art director Courtney Stockstad is first at bat, along with title designer Mila Matveeva, who show the evolution of the franchise’s impact, alternating from an ever-growing stack of VHS tapes with increasingly desperate titles, various merchandise items and toys, and news articles chronicling the rise and fall of the Billy in the wake of the series’ alleged success and Kris’ circling of the property with the intention to modernize it. After that, set decorator Hana Cook gets to have a little bit of fun despite basically just working on an extended candy commercial by placing the Nerds Gummies in such a way that the candy aisle in a standalone gas station gets to mimic the color palette which Eric Yue’s camera will film later on in the various fugue state sequences.

Unfortunately, beyond the production design, Camp Miasma drags on, yet with none of the peace or the guilt of wasting away a hot summer afternoon at camp. The first act is Schoenbrun, through Kris, desperately trying to flex their knowledge and understanding of the slasher genre by repeating back words – desire, transphobia, split diopter – that we as an audience can fully understand the entire argument behind and move on because these points have been made time and time again by people who are not afraid to get in the trenches and actually make a point. It becomes the insufferable academic’s Marvel movie where they get to point at the screen and say they understand the references. That is all their thesis is, a collection of reference points, while audiences are expected to bring their own familiarity with the subject matter to fill in the gaps and give the illusion that Camp Miasma actually has something deep and important to say. Billy does quip in from time to time, telling Kris to shut up and enjoy the film, but from high atop the lofty pillars of Schoenbrun’s/Kris’ own self-importance, that edict, strangely enough given from someone who is meant to have a place of prominence in their life, is not heeded.

This is because the film is constantly at war with itself – possibly, to be fair to the film, a metaphor for the trans experience – but from what is actually on screen, the thematic discontinuity really stems from the complete lack of chemistry fostered between Einbinder and Anderson. Given that almost the entirety of the film circles these two, we understand that there is supposed to be DESIRE here, but it hardly shines through. Kris’ awkwardness can be forgiven if Billy was allowed to be more of a temptress, but Billy is so wishy-washy in her motivations on the page that this meet-cute over a bucket of fried chicken is just that. Billy is written so that for much of the film, she does seem to have Kris’ best interests in mind, but somewhere late in the second act, there is a shift where she is no longer that altruistic, especially given the revelations surrounding her stepping back from the spotlight, though she never becomes the spider woman that would have given the film some narrative weight in its back end.

Before that, though, there is an interlude which allows Yue to mimic the style of the B-movie slashers and show us “Camp Miasma.” It follows all of the standard tropes, which is to be expected, as we follow the hony, buzzed, and stoned camp staff on their first night together and last night before the campers arrive. Will (Zach Cherry), one of the counselors, relays the story of Little Death (Jack Haven), a ghost that lives at the bottom of the lake, emerging from the depths with a window air conditioner unit over their head like a mask and a spear in their hand to kill the campers and the staff; in a moment of rare self-control, Schownbrun does not wax poetic about the phallic nature of the spear. The reason for the killings? Little Death was raised by two hermaphrodite parents and would alternate which gender they would identify as each day. Again, the clumsy fumbling of gender identity here is the point; look to Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid (1989), and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) for horror’s association with queer-coded villains, a tradition still being practised as recently as Longlegs (2024). The entire thing is shot to mimic the style of the time, with grainier colors in the low-light environments, and rounded corners often found in 16mm presentation. Schoenbrun, however, ruins the entire immersion by drastically changing the tone of this film within a film, switching from standard shot structure to a very modern oner as Little Death ups their kill count, and while the geysers of blood were done practically, they look so digitally artificial in the frame that it betrays our experience watching this film along with Kris and Billy. Like that one kid from high school who always took a joke too far, Schoenbrun piles on in the violence here, trying to make it humorous while at the same time trying to immitate with snickering reverence to the films they are responding to with Camp Miasma, not grasping that their reproduction lacks any of the authenticity of those films that allowed them to both be gratuitous in their gore and goofiness; something Ti West expertly showed in his dissertation of the genre in X (2022), though, to be fair, he similarly devolves into showing off his knowledge and influence in “MaXXXine (2024) Takes Hollywood.”

Beyond the styling of Little Death in the excessive “isn’t this so zany and goofy” kind of way, thematically, Schoenbrun seems completely unaware that they have taken on the role of the Hollywood exec who thinks that they can slot in a queer filmmaker to balance out the problematic aspects of their dated IP. In the case of Camp Miasma, they are using their own identity as a shield from criticism and an excuse to get away with this sophomoric edge-lord humor, and will be insulated from audiences who come to their film with even just a passing grasp on the genre being able to recognize and criticize the incongruity between the homage and what is actually being presented.

This is most egregious in the third act, as Billy reveals to Kris that she stepped back from acting because, on set as Squeak (Amanda Fix), she was not acting in the finale of that film, which found her character losing her virginity to Alex (Arthur Conti). Rather, she decided that she, in real life, was going to lose her virginity that day on set, and it is unclear if she made those intentions fully clear to her costar. Regardless, at some point during the scene, she grows uncomfortable, and while she does not say no, as doing so would risk her career, she is nevertheless raped by him, in front of an audience, and during this assault she found her escape in Little Death, who was in the corner waiting to kill her assailant. For Kris, specifically the younger Kris (Freya Edwards), this scene becomes her own sexual awakening, and now as an adult, she is chasing that feeling. Instead of actually examining this plot point, or using it as an avenue to examine the co-opting of the male gaze with the queer gaze, the parallels between horror and kink, or to reconcile culture’s relationship with the rape revenge microgenre – though any examination would probably have plateaued at a few eye-rolling jabs at the role of an intimacy coordinator – Schoenbrun decides to fetishize victimhood as Billy helps Kris recreate her assault, once again flipping the roles. This is not framed as a way to empower Billy all these years later over her attacker, but rather it comes off as her, from her position of power, grooming Kris; not dissimilar to how she withheld her intentions from Alex years before. What makes matters worse is that, because the entire film was leading up to this moment, it is about the only time the film tries to treat this relationship with any type of reverence, but again, like the hooting and hollering class clown from the back of the room, Schoenbrun has to punctuate this rape replication with a joke as Little Death struggles to remove their spear from Billy’s back.

Like most meta films, they remind us of all the superior referential works that we would much rather be watching. Like most films about filmmaking, the self-inserted main character comes off as more elitist than likeable. Like most films that pick at deeply personal scars, they are often left better in the pages of a diary or relayed from a couch to a therapist. To its credit, though, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is through and through a Jane Schoenbrun picture, for better, but mostly for worse. They have a certain eye for style that is unlike anything else being put on screen today, and there is the potential to make something great; however, without much of an original thought to add to the film’s thesis, it is an incredibly dull and boring narrative to watch unfold, and emotionally, they seem to get lost in translating their experience to the page and then on to the screen. With each film – We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021), I Saw the TV Glow (2024), and now Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma – their budgets have increased while their own confidence in their storytelling has suffered an inversely proportional slip. Perhaps the dream of becoming a filmmaker has become too real. It is time to turn off the screen, go outside, and experience something new to bring into their lexicon, but if Schoenbrun takes the isolating lessons which Camp Miasma champions to heart, then, like the umpteenth sequel to our own favorite horror franchises, the returns will only continue to diminish. We can at least hope that the popcorn is good, though.