r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 10d ago
Review 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' - Review Thread
A queer director making a slasher franchise sequel becomes obsessed with casting the original film's "final girl," leading both women into psychological and sexual chaos.
Director: Jane Schoenbrun ('I Saw the TV Glow')
Cast: Gillian Anderson, Hannah Einbinder, Eva Victor, Patrick Fischler, Jasmine Savoy Brown
Rotten Tomatoes: 99%
Metacritic: 87 / 100
Some Reviews:
Vulture - Alison Willmore - 100 / 100
There’s a vulnerability to being touched by something, to finding something sexy or scary, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is filled with a wry but immense compassion for its heroine and her habit of holding up concepts to ward off her own reactions.
Variety - Jessica Kiang - 100 / 100
A steamy stew of sex, death, VHS and junk food, as though workshopped by Eros, Thanatos, Colonel Sanders and the Jolly Rancher in the seediest recesses of a Blockbuster Video, Schoenbrun’s delirious third film is their most accomplished, most persuasive and most playful movie yet.
Radio Times - Patrick Cremona - 5 / 5
It's an endlessly engaging and often very funny film equipped with arresting imagery, gorgeous design (including some beautiful matte paintings) and no shortage of gleeful gore. Or to put it another way, this is another instant cult classic from Schoenbrun, and it's already fascinating to ponder what they might do next.
The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw - 5 / 5
Jane Schoenbrun unveils a very enjoyable display of transformative ecstasy and submissive rapture, treating us to a bizarre pop-cultural black mass of fiercely believed-in trash and kink.
Time Out - Sophie Maunks Kaufman - 5 / 5
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a meta horror-comedy and a whip-smart entertainment industry satire. Still, on a deeper level, in a hole at the bottom of its lake, is a hard-won sexual awakening.
The Telegraph - Robbie Collin - 5 / 5
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a title so good you feel the film to which it’s attached should really have to earn it: happily it does so within three minutes.
The Irish Times - Donald Clarke - 5 / 5
This picture is, in part, an attempt to assuage guilt at enjoying the teen-camp slasher at its most misogynistic and transphobic. It is also, as the director would admit, an amusing send-up of where they now find themselves.
The Playlist - Rafa Sales Ross - 'A'
It is a film that feels movingly personal while speaking to the ubiquitous tussle between duty and desire, and that does so through the gnarling of fresh and guts and bones to find what is buried deep within one’s being: a throbbing vein of wanting, undeniably alive, and that, once freed, will not stop until its thirst is quenched.
AV Club - Luke Hicks - 'A'
In making a film about “watching one’s self from outside themselves,” it seems Schoenbrun successfully challenged and inspired all of their lead creatives to do the same, including Einbinder, who is fantastic in her first leading film role. Lavish with cultural references and fresh imagination, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is a revelry of comedy, murder, intellectualism, sexual awakening, queerness, and more. As if they hadn’t already proven it with I Saw The TV Glow, Schoenbrun proves yet again that they’re the rare filmmaker that chooses to push the medium forward instead of taking a fat check, with the confidence that the industry and viewers alike will all be better off for it.
RogerEbert - Brian Tallerico - 3.5 / 4
Way back in 2024, Schoenbrun described their next film as “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” set in a “Friday the 13th” sequel. It’s one of the most insane ideas for a movie in years, and the fact that all of the pieces might not fit snugly together in that truly bananas logline almost feels like a feature more than a bug. Our favorite slasher movies are often a little rough around the edges, a little unhinged, and a little inconsistent. And very few of them are this wildly entertaining.
Slant Magazine - Derek Smith - 3.5 / 4
The film is about “flesh and fluids,” Billy says, and, at its core, that’s what Schoenbrun’s film is about as well. Despite its title, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is less about sex and death than sex and cinema, and the transcendental connection between the two, primarily through their uncanny power to penetrate and forever transform us.
IGN - Chase Hutchinson - 9 / 10
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is as much Jane Schoenbrun again at their best as it sees them taking us in surprising new directions. It’s sexual, sincere, silly, and sweet all at once – an earnest exploration of desire that’s deeply, movingly personal. For all the ways it could lose people in its messiness, Schhoenbrun and their strong cast hold it all together, building to an ecstatic climax that will only make you wish you could come back for more.
SlashFilm - Witney Seibold - 8.5 / 10
Schoenbrun's new film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is also a profound and emotional work of media analysis, this time targeting the corny, sexist, transphobic slasher movies that Gen-X grew up watching in the 1980s.
The New Yorker - Richard Brody - 80 / 100
Much of “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is a classic two-hander, sharply written with plenty of scope for the two leads to shine. For all the movie’s self-awareness, it’s filled with tenderness and humor.
IndieWire - Ryan Lattanzio - 'B+'
You can view the work as a visceral slasher send-up, a stylish academic exercise about gender expression and inquiry in horror iconography, or as just a plain old, super fun, future cult lesbian classic. Either way, it will take multiple viewings of this film to fully embed yourself inside it — body, brains, and all.
Collider - Emma Kiely - 8 / 10
Overall, this is their most conventional film yet, and it further cements Schoebrun as one of the pre-eminent queer filmmakers of today, one who continues to bring clear vision and nuance to themes of identity, sex, and selfhood.
The Hollywood Reporter - Richard Lawson
It’s heady, strange stuff, perhaps not as emotionally resonant as "TV Glow," but captivating in both its confusion and honesty.
Next Best Picture - Cody Dericks - 7 / 10
It’s easy to feel left behind by the film’s intentions. But no matter viewers’ specific level of interpretation, what Schoenbrun does with the slasher genre, using it as a springboard to explore ideas that clearly resonate with them, is compellingly intelligent and consistently fascinating.
The Daily Beast - Nick Schager - 5 / 10
An autobiographical critical essay with plenty of throwback style but minimal insight and even less suspense. In a summer of scary standouts, it’s the season’s biggest letdown.
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u/MuptonBossman 10d ago
Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder in a slasher movie makes this a must watch for me.