Producers: Daniel Bekerman, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Jeffrey Penman and Willy McGee Director: Jane Schoenbrun Screenplay: Jane Schoenbrun Cast: Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Fix, Arthur Conti, Eva Victor, Zach Cherry, Sarah Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Quintessa Swindell, Jack Haven, Kevin McDonald, Hunter Dillon, Jess McLeod, Willy McGee and Aaron Buchholz Distributor: MUBI
Grade: B+
There are some terrifically funny moments in Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to the bizarre but fascinating “I Saw the TV Glow,” which replaces the latter’s obsession with a TV series that melded “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The X-Files” with a similar fixation on a horror-movie franchise that mashes together “Friday the 13th” and “Sleepover Camp.”
One of the best comes at the very start, a wonderfully overstuffed credits sequence designed by Mila Matveeva that briskly and hilariously provides a history of the “Camp Miasma” phenomenon. In a crisp succession of graphics, we’re informed that it began with a smash slasher flick in 1983 about a gender-fluid kid, drowned by the other campers, who arose from the lake dressed in a HUAC suit with a vent box mask, killing off the camp counselors with a spear. The movie went on to spawn thirteen sequels (a personal favorite “Medieval Miasma: Brandish the Spear”), as well as an arcade game, an “Escape from Camp Miasma” board game (complete with elaborate rule book), and much merchandise—T-shirts, caps, action figures and toys (including a little spear that, a news article discloses, had to be recalled because it posed a choking danger to infants).
The sequence offers some deliciously edgy jokes (identifying the director of the first two movies as Ray Blanchard, for example, and the Killer as Little Death, a name with obvious sexual connotations) while recording the decline of the series via reports of increasingly terrible reviews and collapsing box office receipts. But most important, it catalogues the escalating criticism of the basic premise as transphobic, which helped to seal its doom, though of course it survived as a popular cult item—especially since the original film’s star, “final girl” Billy Presley (Amanda Fix), famously refused to reprise her role in the sequels and became a virtual recluse who never acted again.
But contemporary Hollywood being what it is, studio execs will never let a potentially lucrative piece of IP languish forever, so there’s a plan underway to resurrect Little Death, though changes in the killer’s origin story will obviously be required in this more sensitive age. The refashioning job has been handed to writer-director Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder), a young Sundance star who famously retold the “Psycho” story from the perspective of the shower curtain and identifies as queer and polyamorous. She seems the perfect choice to make the franchise respectable for the new world.
Williams is a fan of the “Camp Miasma” series despite recognizing its transphobia, but she’s a nervous type beset by personal and professional turmoil. Her partner Mari (Jasmin Savoy Brown) is only blandly supportive of her work and brushes of Kris’s concerns to have fun with her doofus boyfriend Thor (Aren Buchholz). And her hard-driving agent (Sarah Sherman) merely impresses on her the importance of getting this huge opportunity right.
To Kris that requires interviewing the now-sixtyish Billy (Gillian Anderson), who lives alone on the camp set of the original film. Just getting Presley’s agreement to talk is a coup, but Kris is even more excited when she arrives in the snowbound nearby town to find that gas station attendant Rudolph (Patrick Fischler) played the same role in the movies, warning the counselors about the camp’s dangers, and that motel clerk Anthony (Kevin McDonald) played the obtuse sheriff.
The centerpiece of her visit, however, is the encounter with Billy, who insists Kris stay with her. What develops between them is something of a mentor-student relationship with lots of sexual undercurrents, like both savoring drippin’ sauce with their fried chicken.
They eat surrounded by the colorful packets and empty wrappers of the candy Kris bought on her way, watching Billy’s print of “Camp Miasma” along with us. We see the counselors arriving at the gas station—Julie (Quintessa Swindell) observing what a hunk Chuck (Hunter Dillon) is, rebellious-looking Alex (Arthur Conti) eyeing Billy’s character greedily—and then hear chubby Will (Zach Cherry) relating the tale of Little Death’s murder, the no-longer tolerable origin story—over a campfire.
A steamy intercourse scene between Billy’s virginal teen and Alex is soon followed by the rise of Little Death (Jack Haven) from the lake, lance upraised, and after the solo terminations of a few counselors, including mohawk-coiffed DJ Ella (Eva Victor) and Chuck, he sweeps in a balletic assault through the clubhouse, skewering the other counselors en masse. This explosion of mayhem, with cartoonish bursts of blood, is staged less in imitation of the actual slasher movies of the eighties than in the gloriously over-the-top fashion of Brian De Palma at his most unbridled.
But that visual flamboyance isn’t limited to the movie-within-a-movie; it infuses everything in the Kris-Billy encounter. The production design by Brandon Tonner-Connolly and Matt Hyland is a candy-colored cornucopia of matte paintings and practical effects, the artificiality enhanced by Kendra Terpenning’s sumptuous costuming for Anderson. Eric K. Yue’s cinematography revels in the voluptuousness, abetted by Graham Mason’s languorous editing.
The leads give themselves over completely to the mood the filmmakers create, with Einbinder’s fluttery persona dovetailing with Anderson’s refined eccentricity. Presley is compared repeatedly to Norma Desmond, but she’s a far more knowing figure, though a no less manipulative one. Her impact is portrayed in a sequence no less hilarious than the opening credits, in which Kris has a zoom conference about the radical ideas she’s somehow developed under Billy’s influence for reinventing Little Death’s origin.
In front of bigwig Jeffrey (Dylan Baker, in a wildly extravagant send-up of the Hollywood mentality), who’s just returned from consulting with Jason Blum about a possible “Halloween” TV series (cue a joke about Michael Meyers/Myers), and his eager-to-please lackeys Tracy (Jess McLeod) and Mason (producer Willy McGee), an increasingly agitated Kris presents a weirdly Cronenbergian vision in which Little Death becomes the creator of the entire franchise. Adding to the absurdity of the situation, as the befuddlement of the three executives escalates it’s revealed that the fourth person on the call is a somber-faced woman (Louisa Weard) identified on the zoom screen not by name but merely as “Queer Assistant.”
The off-kilter ending of a film that has persistently flouted conventionality is accentuated even in the weather. Kris arrived with kids engaging in a snowball fight at the garage, but only a few days later, as she prefers to leave it’s a beautiful spring day with the kids doing battle with super soakers. The climate has morphed inexplicably in every respect.
The peculiarity of “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” pretty much ensures that the film, while a fascinating exercise brilliantly combining Schoenbrun’s unusual sensibility and artistic aesthetic, as well as a caustically funny sense of humor, is likely to be, like “I Saw the TV Glow,” a succès d’estime embraced by critics and a small band of fervent fans but leaving others totally bewildered—those who will respond to it just as Jeffrey does to Kris’s unhinged presentation of Little Deat’s new origin story: “What the f**k” was that?”
The answer is that it’s a dazzling oddity that’s also a deeply personal statement you’ll either respond to, or not.