‘Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma’ Review: Jane Schoenbrun’s Psychedelic Slasher Is An Instant Cult Classic – Cannes Film Festival

Fear and desire make an explosive cocktail in Jane Schoenbrun’s instant midnight-movie classic Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a psychedelic tribute to the slasher-horror cycle of the early ’80s that subversively reclaims the genre from the traditional male gaze. It’s clear from the outset where Schoenbrun is headed, creating a mash-up of the better-known canon — Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (in order of appearance) — but the added twist is the inclusion of 1983’s Sleepaway Camp, which ends with a transgressive twist that still somehow divides LGBTQ+ film critics, despite its obvious transphobia.

The title alone does most of the heavy lifting, being the most glorious since Kathy Acker’s 1984 novel Blood and Guts in High School. It also fairly describes the majority of the film’s preoccupations — also including comfort food, which comes in the form of KFC, Jolly Rancher gummies, KitKats and more. In its aesthetic alone, the film will hit the spot for those who fell under the spell of horror movies while far too young to see them in cinemas. Movies like Wes Craven’s brutal 1972 shocker Last House on the Left, with its unforgettable tagline: “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, ‘It’s only a movie… Only a movie… Only a movie…’ ”

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