By Jorge Ignacio Castillo

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (USA, 2026. Dir: Jane Schoenbrun): Full disclosure: The much-celebrated sophomore effort by Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow, did nothing for me. At best, it was a Buffy the Vampire Slayerepisode stretched to feature length (S6, ep. 17, “Normal Again”). Not surprisingly, I was wary of all the early praise for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

It’s definitely not the reinvention of the slasher it has been touted as, but Camp Miasma makes good use of its setup to explore sexual awakening and wrong turns along the way (this may come as a shock to parents everywhere, but the kills were only half the appeal of Friday the 13th). This approach makes for a strong first half and explains why the rest of the movie fails to live up to its early promise.

In classic movie-within-a-movie fashion, we’re introduced to the Camp Miasma cinematic universe (a thinly veiled Friday the 13th/Sleepaway Camp knockoff) and the filmmaker tapped to bring the franchise into the 21st century, Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder, Hacks). A Sundance Film Festival wunderkind, Kris travels to the Pacific Northwest to meet the reclusive star of the first movie, Billy Presley (a brilliantly cast Gillian Anderson), who has made the location of the first Camp Miasma movie her home.

The filmmaker gets more than she bargained for when Billy appears more interested in unlocking her sexuality than in developing the plot for the new Camp Miasma incarnation. Up to this point, the movie is fun and flirty, if not remotely scary. But, like many directors before Schoenbrun, the dreamy quality that overtakes the second half feels more like a cop-out than an earned reprieve from reality (see: David Lynch).

Key to making sense of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is the fact that the serial killer at the centre of the franchise is known as Little Death (la petite mort in French, which describes the sensation that follows an orgasm). Little Death is not to be kept buried in the lake but embraced and cherished, never mind the body count… If you think the metaphor doesn’t hold much water, you would be correct.

Far more satisfying is to watch the movie as a transgender woman’s journey: sex doesn’t come easily when you feel you’re in the wrong body. This is a very valid point, and one wishes Schoenbrun had tackled the subject head-on rather than using genre filmmaking as a crutch. Another solid statement—that sometimes slashers are fun because they are silly and gooey and scary and don’t need to be turned into “elevated horror”—would hold water if it weren’t for the fact that everything else about this movie screams the opposite. As maddening as Camp Miasma can be, there’s a lot of meat on these bones for a decent stew. ★★★☆☆

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing on MUBI.