Horror

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review: Everything Reminds Me of Slasher

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

You could spend an hour watching the first three minutes of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun’s fascinating, frustrating new whatsit. After its brief and exaggeratedly bloody cold open—an actor receives facial touch-ups, then slaughters a few nitwits, producing geysers of red fluid—the movie revs into its title sequence, revealing the prior scene as in-universe footage from the titular low-budget horror flick. With speed and precision, Schoenbrun communicates a half-century of meta lore by way of a blizzard of media artifacts: piles of faded VHS tapes, dusty old newspaper appraisals, chintzy arcade games, screenshots of online verticals. It’s a blindingly fast montage that cleanly situates Camp Miasma as a fictional variant of durable franchises like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and other species of endlessly rebooted IP, one whose initial acclaim gradually gave way to hacky sequelized bloat. It’s an immersive introduction that also presents a thorny challenge: Can Schoenbrun say anything new about the slasher picture?

Kind of. Schoenbrun is an obvious student of the subgenre, and their excavation of its history is peppered with winking touches and loving references, even as it spikes that affection with suspicion. Yet while Teenage Sex—the real 2026 film, as distinct from Camp Miasma, the diegetic 1980s one—is decidedly brainy and innovative, it is also occasionally self-satisfied and ultimately incoherent. But it is watchable, and it’s plainly the product of a thoughtful and idiosyncratic creative voice. It may not be a great movie, but it’s one hell of a Criterion booklet. Read More

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The End of Oak Street review: Where Goes the Neighborhood

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anne Hathaway, Christian Convery, Maisy Stella, and Jordan Alexa Davis in The End of Oak Street

On the surface, everything looks perfect: sunny skies, verdant lawns, beaming kids. “You’ve got a great family,” a man says to Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor) as his wife and two children frolic at a local barbecue. But while outside observers might perceive Greg and Denise (Anne Hathaway) as the joint head of an idyllic nuclear household, a few strained glances and terse words reveal otherwise. His extra shifts as a pizza deliveryman aren’t paying the bills, she’s secretly channeling her resentments into a novel, and they’re rarely on the same page, whether socially or financially. They certainly can’t afford Cornell’s tuition for their daughter (Maisy Stella, from My Old Ass), who’s discovering that quoting Carl Sagan doesn’t impress pretty girls. Their son (The Monkey’s Christian Convery), is “acting out” and seems more comfortable playing with their rambunctious blue heeler than with his peers. They seemed destined for a rupture—an earth-shaking event that will permanently puncture their veneer of domestic bliss. And that’s before the monsters show up.

Like Companion, The Drama, and others of their ilk, The End of Oak Street is a film whose very premise arguably qualifies as a spoiler, given that it withholds its cards for around 20 minutes. So before wading into revealing waters—seas that its trailer and marketing campaign had no compunction swimming in—let me just say that this movie is a rollicking piece of mainstream entertainment. The first feature in seven years from writer-director David Robert Mitchell, it’s both imaginatively conceived and confidently executed. If it isn’t a work of great depth, that’s because its characters are too busy scampering to fully develop. Slow down in this town, and you’re liable to get eaten by a dinosaur. Read More

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Backrooms review: If These Walls Could Stalk

Jeremy BeckReviews
Chiwetel Ejiofor in Backrooms

It’s been a rough few decades for the retail furniture business. First came the internet. Then the housing market crashed. And now arrives Backrooms, a head-tripping horror picture that conceives of a big-box emporium whose basement contains a secret gateway to hell. It’s a work of fiction, but it still might give homeowners pause before they go browsing through the aisles looking for their next loveseat.

Backrooms is the brainchild of Kane Parsons, and the story behind the story—why is this thing such a hit? Just what exactly is a YouTuber? Wait, this guy is twenty?—threatens to overwhelm the movie proper. So it’s important to acknowledge that Backrooms, while far from perfect, is an accomplished and distinctive feature debut. It suggests the work of an artist with his own unique vision, even if that vision isn’t yet fully formed. Read More

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Obsession review: Hunger and Cursed

Jeremy BeckReviews
Inde Navarrette in Obsession

You’ve met dudes like Bear before, especially at the movies. He’s a lovelorn sad sack—a sweet, sensitive guy nursing a crush on a beautiful, unattainable girl. The first time we see him, he appears to be finally confessing his true feelings, delivering the kind of anecdote-laden speech that tends to produce everlasting happiness (think the end of When Harry Met Sally). This proves to be a feint—he’s in fact rehearsing his declaration of love—but it nonetheless cements Bear as an earnest, sympathetic protagonist. We’re all rooting for him.

Given this setup, you might think that Obsession, the second feature from multi-hyphenate Curry Barker, is a romantic comedy. It isn’t. It’s a horror movie, one that traffics in supernatural phenomena, jolting suspense, and sporadic bursts of blood and gore. It’s consistently unsettling, and not just for the way it interrogates how cinema exalts nobly suffering men at the expense of idealized, objectified women. Read More

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Mother Mary review: Bless This Dress

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michaela Coel and Anne Hathaway in Mother Mary

The tagline for David Lowery’s Mother Mary reads, “This is not a ghost story.” For certain cinephiles, this seems less like an ominous pronouncement than a bizarre statement of the obvious. Of course this isn’t A Ghost Story; that was Lowery’s 2017 experimental drama, which found Casey Affleck standing under a sheet and Rooney Mara stuffing pie in her face. It was challenging and slow, but it rewarded patience, with a remarkable third act that posed provocative questions about love, marriage, societal evolution, and the whole damn human condition.

Mother Mary is similarly ambitious and not nearly as good. But it has its moments, with impressive individual scenes and striking images. It wields its beauty in service of a thin and listless narrative, but taglines and titles aside, “story” has never been Lowery’s department. Read More

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