Chelsea Alexandra
If you’re a die-hard Jane Schoenbrun fan, you never have to worry about a letdown. We are constantly winning, and with this latest trailer drop for their next project, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, it’s just another win for the books. Schoenbrun is one of the most exciting and unique voices in filmmaking right now. What draws most people to Schoenbrun’s films is how they are able to capture teenage loneliness and queerness with such raw honesty. In some ways, they have solidified themselves as not only a bold voice in queer horror but also as almost inventing a new subgenre with their films, “mumble-core horror”, or at least that is one way I like to describe their films in a complimentary way.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows an enthusiastic queer director played by Hannah Einbinder, who is eager to revive the famous slasher franchise Camp Miasma. In doing so, the filmmaker tracks down the original star of the film, played by Gillian Anderson. The trailer offers the first genuine glimpse of Anderson as the film’s reclusive star. According to the official logline, the two soon descend into “a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.” Sold. Seated.
To be Einbinder and not only get to work with the sensational Jean Smart on Hacks, and now gets to share screen space with the beautiful and legendary icon like Anderson. It makes you ask yourself, “When will it be my turn?”
In their third feature, Schoenbraun aims to pay homage to the slasher genre. In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, says, “my next movie is all about sex—essentially a movie about learning to enjoy sex after transition.” Almost since the beginning of the genre, slasher films and sex have gone hand in hand. Part influenced by conservative ideals, anyone in a slasher who was having premarital sex was often met with a brutal fate. Schoenbrun flips that script on the genre. By exploring queer desire within the heightened, often exaggerated world of a summer camp slasher, the film opens up space to discuss sexuality. Schoenbruan has already had very personal queer conversations with their audience, so it is exciting to see this kind of conversation that isn’t often discussed being presented.
Stylistically, the trailer isn’t drenched in blood but with Schoenbraun’s signature lonely atmospheric shots and a sad boy music to open the trailer and set the tone right out the gate. There are hums from an old CRT TV with the blue light illuminating a young girl’s face who is mesmerized by the horrors on the screen while an ominous voice of a woman whispering, “If it gets too real, you can always turn it off.” There is an alluring ambiguity to the trailer; it doesn’t give much away but provides enough to get you interested. It’s intriguing.
This third feature reunites Schoenbraun with actor Jack Haven, who stars in I Saw the TV Glow, and musician Alex G to score the film. G has previously worked on both We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, scoring both projects. This time, G teams up with Paul Buchanan of the Scottish band The Blue Nile for an original song that is featured in the trailer entitled “Pain Is the Heart of Love”.
Distributed by MUBI, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma slices into U.S. theaters on August 7.
