Written by Alexa LoSchiavo. Photo by Alexa LoSchiavo.
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” became an instant camp classic for me, despite the ambiguity of genre and meaning that lingered in the audience after the movie ended. The film was shown on night four of Film Fest in Lucas Theatre, amid hoards of film connoisseurs and viewers alike. Lauded as a Festival Cannes selection and best feature at Gottheim, the film is bathed in brilliance before anyone sees it–and it lives up its acclaim.
The movie opens with shaky breathing and a view of the antagonist, “Little Death,” slashing a camper. Blood gushes out of him like a fountain, 10 feet higher than blood would normally go. The audience laughs, the commentary on the absurdity of slasher films not lost on anyone. With that, we enter the Camp Miasma universe with a heavy hand and gushing blood.
We meet Kris (Hannah Einbinder) as she drives to visit the actress of the old “Camp Miasma” movie, a film she’s decided to direct with a new angle. The movie shows time passing reminiscent of 2000’s indie films like “Juno” and “But I’m A Cheerleader” with upbeat music and sprawled out text. We get a feeling that Kris’s life is about to change, but we don’t know why.
Einbinder carries Kris with all the naivety that a “final girl” in a slasher film has, but she also holds an air of sarcasm, helping the audience see the irony behind every one of her moves. As she drives further into the wilderness, it becomes clear that she is driving into the place where Camp Miasma was shot. The actress she’s visiting has bought the property and converted it into her own home. The second Kris meets Billy (Gillian Anderson), it’s clear they have chemistry. The tension is palpable as Billy invites Kris into her world.
As Billy and Kris fall in love, we notice a tension that’s expressed more broadly in the work as a whole, Kris’s necessity to intellectualize something clashed with Billy’s ability to give into a feeling. As viewers watch the movie and notice the world of Camp Miasma and “Little Death” blending with reality, we must take a page from Billy’s notebook and give into the feeling.
As the movie unfolds, we are brought into director Jane Schoebruen’s genius with scenes of Kris stripping down to run away from the killer and Billy and Kris noticing the ways sex and death coalesce. We see the ways Schoebruen comments on the misogyny of the slasher film genre,and we see the quiet ways she pushes us to feel the movie rather than intellectualize it.
Slasher horror is about mixing desire and death in a Freudian way and Schoebruen unpacks this in her film in a campy, if a bit heavy-handed way. The killer’s name, “Little Death,” if translated in French, means orgasm, and this is made clear as we watch Kris and Billy fall in love through their passion for slasher films and their fear that mixes its way into desire.
Billy says she loves living inside Camp Miasma because there’s this “feeling of giving into desire and the unknown.” As viewers fall further into the film, we are drawn into the unknown, experiencing the same uncertainty the characters are. Schoebruen has created a film which speaks to collective desire in a campy, exuberant way that will stick with me for many days to come. She invites us to relinquish our analysis and let ourselves go, giving into desire and disharmony.
Alexa is a junior majoring in Writing and hopes to pursue a career in publishing. Outside of writing for District, she can be found writing almost anything, reading in the park, or performing at an open mic!
