Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: Review & Analysis
Fall in love with Little Death
Introduction
Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow (2024) is one of my favourite films in the world, so I was thrilled to learn earlier this year that they had another project on the way.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) premiered in theatres a little over a month ago, and I was lucky to see it with a friend two weeks ago. I'm not generally one to want to know much going in, so really only vaguely knew that it was about movies—plus I'd seen the set photos of actresses Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson covered in gore, which must have been a marketing stunt for all that they were absolutely everywhere.
If you're like me and prefer to learn about media as you consume it, I'd recommend you go watch the film at this point! Especially if you're already a fan of slashers, satire, sapphism, or film history. I won't overpromise, but suffice to say that Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma easily delivered what I wanted from it.
I'll also mention up top that there are some interesting parallels between this film and two queer horror novels I read and enjoyed in the past few weeks: Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin and You Weren't Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White. I'll probably save deeper comparisons for another week, but if you enjoy the horror and lore aspects of Camp Miasma I'd recommend these as well!
Without further ado, let's jump into the lake of spoilers ahead. Warning: the title says sex and death, and that's what it's about!
Little Death
The central plot's fairly straightforward: Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has been hired to direct a new instalment in the fictional Camp Miasma slasher film series—her pitch clearly relating to rejuvenating the brand for modern audiences despite the transphobia at its core. She drives to meet Billy (Gillian Anderson), who played the final girl of the original film and lives at the abandoned sleepaway camp which served as its filming location.
Kris's life is defined by the film series, and she quickly falls under Billy's spell as the pair discuss its history and potential future. We learn that both women have had their sexuality defined by the film: Billy, having been assaulted during the filming, now associates pleasure with violence—watching herself through her killer's eyes, as happened in the film. Kris, meanwhile, can only find pleasure by imagining herself as the sexualized and victimized final girl—the contrast of which with her outlook of female empowerment causes her deep shame.
What symbolic luck, then, that the Camp Miasma killer's name is Little Death (explanation here)! The pair embrace their fantasies as Little Death rises from the lake and murders the rest of the cast, finishing the couple off last and leaving them a bloody mess. The climax is a climax, as it were. The next morning, we see them get up (still covered in gore) and go shopping at a nearby gas station, after which Kris remarks that (as with in the films) Little Death will always return.
On a basic level, it's about Kris and Billy accepting and embracing their sexuality and desires—and it's hilarious if you're up for some gory satire and innuendo. Call the gore at the end symbolism for an obvious afterglow and say they imagined the rest. Trying to determine what "really happened" is just going to give you a headache.
Aaaand the film knows that, so it offers a mind-bending explanation: the Camp Miasma films are actually created and given to humanity by Little Death, including this one. So the entire cast showing up to be slaughtered at the end, the strange cuts between HD and grainy footage, and everything else can just be chalked up to his creative choices.
Or you could say that Kris is imagining that they're in Little Death's film, or that some parts are real and some are from the film she and Billy make, or that the whole thing is a fever dream brought on by KFC, or a million other things. Like I said, headache.
(But a delightfully fun one for me! I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, and between this and I Saw the TV Glow Jane either is too or has my number down pat.)
Trans Experience & Metacommentary
This being the follow up to I Saw the TV Glow, possibly the most powerful vision of trans experiences ever shown on film, viewers are inevitably going to show up expecting more. And while it's there, I think it's worth noting that it's definitely not the film's main moral; the orgasms are.
That being said, between the director's comments and a lot of discourse online it's clear that Billy's experience resonates with a lot of trans and queer people. The horror she felt from sex, feeling like she was disembodied and watching herself, echoes many viewers' experiences of sex pre-transition or pre-awakening to their true selves in any form, such as being asexual, with someone they're not attracted to, etc.
One of the novels I mentioned, You Weren't Meant to be Human, follows a trans man named Crane who also carries deep associations between sex and violence due to the trauma of his situation. (I don't have much more to say on that right now, but an interesting parallel I noticed despite how different he and Billy seem otherwise, in terms of age and agency and environment and so much more. But also, maybe Billy's a lot more trapped than she appears.)
It's also important to note that Little Death is described as bigender or genderfluid, that his origin story is that he was murdered by campers as simply a monstrous freak (definitely an homage to Sleepaway Camp's 1983 twist ending). He's portrayed by non-binary and transmasculine actor Jack Haven, who played Maddy in I Saw the TV Glow, which adds to the genderfuckery in a delightful way. We see him rising from the lake in the original film to slay his transphobic killers in ridiculous gory triumph and saving Billy from her assault.
There's a lot going on in this film, but it's genuinely just fun to be able to cheer for both the killer and the protagonists—all victimized by the mainstream world at large.
On a similar note, I'll mention here that the early part of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is chock-full of product placements for candy brands and KFC. At first I just figured, hey, Schoenbrun needed a budget so they got one.
But (and this is just me), I wonder if part of their reasoning wasn't also to tie these brands to a queer and trans film in a slightly more committed way than Pride month pandering. Like, the actresses are basically making love with that fried chicken and on a bed of candy.
Final Thoughts
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is not the film I expected when I walked into the theater, but it dazzled me all the same. I'm a huge fan of stories about lost media, about questioning reality, and about surreal and satirical characters, so I absolutely loved our vent-headed hero and lesbian lovebirds.
The other horror book I mentioned, Black Flame, follows a woman restoring an old film negative while her life and world collapse in on her—and again the parallel to Kris is striking, as she becomes immersed in the project and her life up until now begins to look gray and alien in comparison.
I'm sure there's plenty of meaning and easter eggs I missed, so please let me know if you can think of any! Or just your favourite moments from this wonderful film—there's a lot of great ones.
Go watch it if you haven't!
Thanks for reading and until next time <3
Comments