In an era saturated with remakes – and thinkpieces bemoaning said remakes – Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film arrives at the perfect moment. Not only is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma a love-letter-come-takedown of 80s slasher tropes, it’s also a wildly and refreshingly original film of its own.
This is true to form for Schoenbrun, who is one of the most exciting directors working today. Their previous feature, I Saw the TV Glow, was emotionally heavy and wholly unique, using a fictional TV show called ‘The Pink Opaque’ as an allegory for the trans experience. Teenage Sex and Death is lighter and sillier, but no less complex or layered, and similarly uses a fictional media franchise within the film as an artifice for deeper questions about identity and sexuality.
