Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Review: Jane Schoenbrun Reworks the Slasher Through a Dreamlike Lens

Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder lead Jane Schoenbrun’s slasher meditation Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Jane Schoenbrun has established a recognizable cinematic language across We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. Their films are deeply interested in the relationship between media and identity, particularly the ways horror, television and pop culture can become spaces where people discover parts of themselves that may be difficult to articulate elsewhere.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma brings those interests directly into the slasher genre. The result is unmistakably a Schoenbrun film, even when its relationship with the movies that inspired it becomes one of its limitations.

This time, Schoenbrun turns toward the summer-camp slashers of the 1970s and ’80s, with Sleepaway Camp looming particularly large over the material. That influence isn’t hidden. The film repeatedly acknowledges the comparison, using the conventions and cultural baggage of those movies as part of its own examination of horror fandom, gender, sexuality and the mythology surrounding the final girl.

There is an interesting question buried within that approach: What does it mean when someone grows up not simply watching a horror archetype but imagining themselves within it?

That question fits naturally alongside Schoenbrun’s previous work. Horror is again treated as something more complicated than entertainment. It becomes a language through which characters understand desire, identity and themselves. In Camp Miasma, that relationship is filtered through the slasher movie and the cultural fascination surrounding the women who survive them.

The difficulty is that the film’s influences are so pronounced that its commentary can sometimes feel more like a reinterpretation of established material than an evolution of it. Sleepaway Camp and decades of slasher cinema have already accumulated complicated histories involving gender, sexuality, masculinity and the final-girl archetype. Camp Miasma knows that history and openly engages with it, but recognizing those conventions doesn’t always result in something substantially new.

That doesn’t mean the film lacks an identity of its own.

Visually, Schoenbrun remains committed to the dreary, lo-fi dreamscape that has defined their filmmaking. Camp Miasma frequently resembles a piece of slasher ephemera recovered from another era, with VHS imagery, blood and retro horror iconography giving the movie the sensation of being trapped inside old video-store cover art.

Little Death is particularly effective within that aesthetic. The character has the visual simplicity and immediate recognition that a memorable slasher figure needs, and there is enough personality in the design to suggest a life extending beyond the movie itself. Whatever larger ideas viewers take from the film, Little Death is one of its strongest contributions to the slasher landscape.

The performances provide another major strength.

Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder develop a compelling chemistry that occasionally makes their scenes feel closer to intimate theater than conventional slasher filmmaking. Anderson’s presence brings considerable weight to the material, while Einbinder proves equally capable of carrying Schoenbrun’s mixture of emotional introspection, horror and dark humor. Their exchanges become some of the movie’s most engaging passages.

That strength is important because Camp Miasma is considerably more interested in interrogating the slasher than simply functioning as one. Anyone arriving primarily for a straightforward retro body-count movie may find themselves at a distance from what Schoenbrun is attempting.

For viewers already invested in Schoenbrun’s work, however, the thematic continuity will be immediately recognizable. Camp Miasma remains fascinated by the idea that the media people consume can become inseparable from how they understand themselves. The difference is that late-night television and internet spaces have now been replaced by summer camps, final girls and masked killers.

There are worthwhile ideas inside that framework, but there is also a growing sense that Schoenbrun’s established interests and aesthetic are waiting for another stage of development. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma demonstrates considerable control over mood, performance and imagery without always finding enough distance from its influences to make the larger genre commentary feel equally distinctive.

That leaves the film somewhere between admiration for its craft and frustration with its familiarity. Anderson and Einbinder elevate the material, Little Death makes a strong impression, and Schoenbrun’s visual identity remains intact. But the movie’s deliberate conversation with earlier slashers sometimes becomes more compelling than the story being constructed around that conversation.

Schoenbrun remains a filmmaker with a clear perspective and an equally clear audience. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is unlikely to change either. For viewers already connected to the filmmaker’s particular intersection of horror, identity and media nostalgia, there is plenty here that will feel purposeful. Those hoping to see that approach evolve substantially beyond I Saw the TV Glow may leave wanting more.

3 out of 5.