Direction: Jane Schoenbrun
Country: USA
In this sex-charged meta-slasher directed by Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, 2021; I Saw the TV Glow, 2024), a young female writer-director (Hannah Einbinder), embracing queerness and monstrosity, diligently focuses on the remake of Camp Miasma, a cult horror franchise. Her fascination for the gore and campiness of the original film leads her to its main actress (Gillian Anderson), now a reclusive woman who has made the abandoned, isolated sleepaway camp where the film was shot her home.
Packed with unexplained mysteries and forced dualities, Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma occasionally feels immersive in its mood—its atmosphere satirically beautified by magical A.I. backdrops—but falls short on laughs. It fails to produce the desired disturbance, instead leaving me annoyed by its abundance of slasher clichés rather than genuinely provoking me with something outside the box. Notwithstanding, the film won the Queer Award at Cannes.
