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I’ll get to the blood splatter in a minute. There is no dialogue—just quiet chatter–and everything is seen from the point of view of Little Death (Jack Haven), the monster character walking the camp breathing through a contraption resting on his head; think Ben Braddock on the walk to his family’s swimming pool in The Graduate.
Then out of nowhere, Little Death appears and murders a couple walking their dog on a nightly stroll. Then a scream. Oh. Yeah. The umbrella of blood. Think Kill Bill. R.E.M.’s cover of “Night Swimming” accompanies Eric Yue’s camera as the cinematographer pans all media artifacts curated in a museum that made “Camp Miasma” sing: among others, newspaper clippings, photos of people protesting the film, VHS tapes, and the costume of Little Death and its spear encased in glass. Director Jane Schoenburn marks the rise and fall and rediscovery of a genre: the slasher movie.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma stars Gillian Anderson as Billy Pressley, an eccentric aging star of the slasher movie industry living in a cabin near the theater the films were shown; think Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Kris Williams, played by Hannah Einbinder, a queer filmmaker, contracted by a Hollywood film studio, travels to the original film set, Camp Tivoli, in the dead of winter to interview Billy. In this isolated wilderness, Kris hopes to gather research for the reboot of the film Camp Miasma. Hopefully, she can convince Pressley to appear in the film.
Over a dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, dipping sauce, onion rings, and fries, however, Billy turns the tables of the interview to Kris. The food scene is not to be casually dismissed. It strangely intimate and erotic. Eric Yue’s close-ups deliberately close in on Billy’s hands fondling pieces of chicken after placing them on a silver serving tray; in extreme close-up, Yue focuses on fingers removing tinfoil from small containers of sauces, dipping pieces of chicken in the liquid, and the pleasure of taking the first bite of flesh through Billy’s ruby red lips. Just listen to the sound design.
It’s desire. Mess. Grease. Fingers. Fluids all used as metaphors for sexual appetite all filmed in sensual soft lighting of amber, ocher, soft reds, and deep browns.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is sheer excess. slasher conventions, queer identity, sexuality, fandom, Hollywood intellectual property, criticism, nostalgia, trauma, and the complicated politics of representation, a kind of filmic glut that threatens to overwhelm the sensibilities of viewers.
Schoenbrun argues a slasher can frighten us, disgust us, excite us, even evoke real hunger as we watch as spectators its visual grammar of sex and violence.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma plays through September 17 at The Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln.
For Friday Live! I am Kwakiutl Dreher
