One Thing I Like About Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

I haven’t seen Jane Schoenbrun’s other movies, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, but I thought I had a fairly accurate high-level idea of what they were. Art film horror. Heavily influenced by online culture and queer society, but almost certainly humorless and dripping with self-serious pretentiousness. So I’m happy to say that whether I’m right about those movies or completely off-base, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is silly and funny as hell. It pulls off the amazing trick of having all the trappings of a queer confessional art film, with plenty of symbolism and metaphor and open interpretation, but also is dead set on having as much fun with it as possible. There’s a lot in the movie that feels like Schoenbrun poking fun at themself, via main character Kris (Hannah Einbinder) as a sort-of stand-in for the filmmaker, but it’s always with a sense of kindness and genuine self-love. Satire without mockery1 but coming from a place of affection. It’s…