Thriller

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