"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" is everything its predecessor from writer/director Jane Schoenbrun, "I Saw the TV Glow", wasn't; imaginative, cine-literate, beautifully played by its two leads and above all entertaining. Of course, it's another movie about movies and one particular genre of movies in particular but Schoenbrun is savvy enough to make it take in a lot else besides. This is a movie about character, obsession, desire, wokedom, queerdom and our willingness to set aside just what a movie should be. There's an early reference to "Sunset Boulevard" and you might even say that in its demented away this is a kind of queer version of Wilder's classic with Gillian Anderson as Norma Desmond and Hannah Einbinder as Joe Gillis.
It's also stunningly shot by Eric Yue, scored by Alex G and Anderson, channelling her inner Dolly Parton voice, hasn't been this good on screen since "The House of Mirth". Schoenbrun even has fun putting all the tropes of the horror movie inside this academic deconstruction of the genre. It's probably too 'out there', too 'it's-only'a-movie-inside-a-movie-but-remember-it's-still-only-a-movie' for the kind of audience who would have gone to see the original Camp Miasma movies had they existed but otherwise movie buffs in general will have a field-day.
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