Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun revisits their pop-cultural infatuations with meta-slasher homage Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (now on Mubi). In 2024, I Saw the TV Glow found its protagonists forging their identities within the strange aura of a Buffyesque TV series; in Miasma, Hannah Einbinder (Hacks) plays a movie director whose personal and professional lives blur together when she’s hired to reboot a horror-flick franchise she’s long been obsessed with. And the result is quite the provocation.

The Gist: Camp Miasma is the film within this film. Its logo is in that distinctive Friday the 13th font. Its villain, dubbed Little Death (thematic hint: this is a euphemism for “orgasm”), is a spear-wielding maniac with a ceiling air-conditioning vent for a head, and they’re subject to heavy-breathing POV shots just like Michael Myers gets in Halloween. In what’s implied to be the ’80s, the film inspired a pile of shitty sequels and trading cards and action figures — and uber-ultra-mega-fans like Kris (Einbinder), a young-upstart filmmaker who watched Camp Miasma way too young, and now is reviving the franchise. And she spiels about how producers want her to, you know, woke it up, to compensate for how transphobic and exploitative the old movies were. Is “queerify” a word? If so, that’s her job here.

Kris’ first order of business is to get the original movie’s star on board. Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) was the OG Miasma final girl, then abruptly retired from showbiz. Kris sets up a meeting and learns that Billy lives on the deserted campground where the movies were filmed, next to the lake from which Little Death emerged. Neat! Also, weird as heck! Billy helps Kris stop overthinking the concept for the reboot by being as open as she is enigmatic, leading to Kris sharing her innermost feelings, including her inability to enjoy sex. Which means this isn’t just a business meeting, and makes a screening of Billy’s personal print of Camp Miasma an act of foreplay — and busts down the wall between the reality of the movie and the reality of the movie within the movie. And this whole time, our reality as viewers of the movie gets blurred into the movie and the movie within the movie, so I hope you’re taking notes.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? This is essentially David Lynch’s Ti West’s MaXXXine. 

Performance Worth Watching: This is easily Anderson’s best screen role in years, and she and Einbinder develop a dynamic that’s sweet, funny, strange, and wholly endearing.

Sex And Skin: Lady toplessness; a non-graphic but nonetheless hawt sex scene; an icky sex scene from the movie within the movie.

Our Take: I take back that “taking notes” bit. You may just want to let Schoenbrun’s depictions of psychological disassociation, sexual discovery and the ultimate release of death wash over you; as with the works of David Lynch — a clear Schoenbrun influence — applying journalistic who-what-where-when-why-how questions to the plot is foolhardy. TSADACM is more of an intuitive experience than an analytical one, although broadly speaking, like TV Glow, it’s a rumination on identity, and unlike TV Glow, is ultimately about emergence.

Perhaps TSADACM bears too similar a thematic likeness to its predecessor; I also worried that the metatextual jibberjabber weighing down the first half would lead it right up its own ass. But after a lengthy, amusing detour into the movie within the movie, the film stops telling and starts showing, shifting from supertextual (“That’s a lot to unpack,” a movie producer replies to Kris’ unhinged pitch) to suggestive, leaning into surreal eroticism that renders the film distinctive in its vision. Schoenbrun fearlessly explores bizarre fetishes (ranging from bright-colored candy and crispy KFC chicken to gooey mucus membranes) and big ideas, and the result is as tactile as it is ethereal. There’s no other horror-comedy out there remotely like this.

Our Call: Kris: “I think I saw too many movies as a kid and it fucked me up real bad.” STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.