Strip away the synthetic, screensaver backgrounds and an, at times, overbearing affection for an anachronistic slasher series that has never actually existed and you're left with a gentle inquiry into sexual intimacy. Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, at least initially, details the attempts made by a festival darling filmmaker, Kris played by a blushing Hannah Einbinder, to get a handle on a destitute horror franchise that has collapsed into diminishing, straight-to-video claptrap. Hired by a Blumhouse-style production company, in the hope that her queerness will somehow dispel the franchise's transphobic undertones, Kris arranges to meet with the star of the first entry, Gillian Anderson's actress Billy Presley. Kris finds Billy squatting on the ramshackle sets used when filming the original features; the actress perhaps even more obsessed with the ghostly child murderer, who stalked this scenery, than the dialogue-reciting Kris is.
The promise of a film reel viewing of Billy's starring role prompts discussion of the piece with Billy dismissing Kris' description of Camp Miasma's cultural relevance as being overly cerebral, as if the young filmmaker is applying academic language to thoughts and feelings that are rooted in something less reputable: that the faltering, rape-tinged sex and bloody murder present in the film turns Kris on, basically. Although mixed in with the supernatural and a truly triumphant massacre, the meat of Camp Miasma is a gentle goading between two women who have each dismissed themselves as being sexually dysfunctional, only to find another person that they can be truly, truthfully intimate with. The awkward, shy Kris can, at last, realise her fantasy of flowering into a blood-drenched victim, running in her underwear while a deranged killer pursues and a camera lingers on her nakedness. Billy's arc is similarly therapeutic, the actress finally able to die in the arms of someone who adores her rather than a score-notching creep who is leveraging a delicate situation in order to take liberties. Beyond all of that though, the real victory for these women happens later, when the playact is complete, and the pair are covered in dried viscera. They saunter to a well-stocked gas station to merrily chat and shop for snacks, by now deeply embedded in a loving relationship.