"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" Review: Jane Schoenbrun's Bloody Portal at Cannes

Jane Schoenbrun's "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" contains images and shots for which words haven't been invented yet. Some films arrive not as media you watch but as a vision that possesses you; the world Schoenbrun and their crew have meticulously built comes close to that. A world where slasher killers slam dead campers into a tetherball pole until they burst, where corpses line the walls of a video store like fiberglass insulation, where a scene of Gillian Anderson seductively hauling an armful of KFC melts into a roaring fireplace.

Skewering everything from transphobia in slasher films to Hollywood's tendency to champion "woke" narratives only when convenient, Schoenbrun proves themself a master of portals. They've always excelled at framing digital worlds — the TV programs of "I Saw the TV Glow" or the internet's dark corners in "We're All Going to the World's Fair" — as their own "private alternate universes." These virtual worlds offer a safety and a chance to be seen that the outside world never grants.

In this film Schoenbrun interrogates their relationship to those spaces even more deeply: the tension between the tragedy of needing them and the beauty of their reality. What happens to these spaces once we finally become comfortable in our own bodies? Does resurrection always require a kind of death first? Is there a moment in our lives when it becomes too late to transform?

The opening sequence makes this world feel "lived-in" instantly. Rising director Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is hired to helm a remake of the long-running slasher series "Camp Miasma." As Kris shrewdly points out, this hire kills two birds with one stone: Hollywood can't get enough of old IP, and by hiring an LGBTQ+ director, the studio can deflect criticism for reviving a notoriously transphobic series.

As Okay Kaya's "Nightswimming" plays over the credits, we trace the story of "Camp Miasma" through merchandise and newspaper clippings: a surprise cult hit ballooning into an oversaturated multi-film franchise. Board games and a magazine cartoon mocking the series show just how quickly stories can be ground down into mediocrity by the Hollywood machine.

Kris wants to cast Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), who played the original "Camp Miasma" film's lone survivor, in the remake. The retired actress has set up home in the abandoned camp where the films were shot. Their conversations begin strangely, but it's clear there's a bond between them beyond mere curiosity: not just desire, but a hunger simmering beneath the surface.

The real feast is this: it's several films within one. We watch long stretches from the previous "Camp Miasma" movies that stand as art pieces in their own right, including a hilarious, drawn-out slaughter sequence choreographed to Counting Crows' "A Long December." These recreations are proof of Schoenbrun's reverence for the genre's touchstones.

You can feel the joyful collaboration between production designers Matt Hyland and Brandon Tonner-Connolly, art director Courtney Stockstad, and set decorator Hana Cook, whether in the blood-soaked "Camp Miasma" world or in Billy's camp home, which evokes a Lynchian version of Narnia. Though the film is essentially a two-hander between Anderson and Einbinder, the camp sequences give Schoenbrun's new and returning collaborators room to leave a lasting impression — especially Eva Victor as DJ Ella Giastic.

There are certainly sequences and motifs that may feel overwhelming — but that's not a flaw of the film, it's a feature. Not being able to form coherent thoughts after watching it is a sign of its strange power and staying ability. It's hard to accept a new gospel on first encounter; the gift of Schoenbrun's work is, above all, that it carries a generous spirit of invitation. Settle into their confident, deranged wavelength and watch the veil fall from your eyes. Bring plenty of jelly beans — after all, as Kris says, we're living in a golden age.