Movie Review – Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Director Jane Schoenberg has brought to life a film that is simultaneously about sexual awakening and deconstruction of the slasher film. It’s also reminiscent of David Lynch in a way while simultaneously being something truly original. Bravo, Ms. Schoenberg.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) drives into a snowy Pacific Northwest forest in search of a reclusive Final Girl actress Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson). She finds Billy living at the original sleep-away camp that 80s slasher ‘Camp Miasma’ was filmed. Kris wants to reinvent the original into something new, but she’s thought about it so hard that her educated woke thinking is keeping her from doing so.

What transpires for Kris – and I’m going to be as spoiler free as possible because you should be surprised by the film upon first viewing – is a true sexual awakening. Not just from a sexy older woman and the Final Girl who made her realize she was bisexual as a child, but from the entire creative process. Her arc from educated Girl Movie Nerd to Final Girl status is a beautiful thing to watch.

Billy, on the other hand, is walking sexual beauty. Every moment she occupies space in the frame is a moment that it’s impossible to look away. Anderson’s performance is so breathtakingly heartbreaking, funny, and enigmatic that I fell in love with her again, as I’ve been doing since 1993.

The killer, Little Death, is such a bizarre take on a slasher killer that it only adds to the mystique of the sleep-away camp in the film and of the slasher genre as a whole. The commercialization of a masked killer who, after countless sequels, has lost all recollection of what made him a killer. This film reflects on the problematic issues that came forward through time within the genre while also utilizing them in a different way.

The ‘is the ending real’ ambiguity will have people guessing for years much in the way that we talk about Mulholland Drive. I could watch this a dozen times and have a different take each time. I love the director for this. For giving us an imaginative take on horror, regret, and sexuality and intertwining them into a sparkly, blood soaked spectacle with a side of fried chicken and candy. And there is so much candy.

Years from now, people will look back on this film and see it as a leap forward for the slasher horror genre much in the same way that Cabin in the Woods was a leap forward for the cabin/travel horror genre. It is as much a retrospective on the over commercialization of intellectual properties and the exploitation of women as it is a love letter to the slasher. I don’t know what led to coming up with this masterpiece, but the genius behind it is going to bring us great things in the future.

5 out of 5 stars. And I’ve never wanted fried chicken so badly in my entire life.