From that title alone, I was on for this movie. I say that – frankly – I struggled with writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s previous features. Seeing I Saw the TV Glow, I felt like the old, tediously heterosexual guy on the outside looking in, knowing a younger crowd would absolutely love it and get it on every level.
Nonetheless, there was enough in there that they’ve stuck with me and grown in my estimation as the years pass. Teenage Sex and Death made good on that guesswork and then some.
At first, this is a dork’s playground. Hannah Einbender plays Kris, a nascent queer filmmaker hired by a studio to revamp/remake/reimagine/reboot (soft)/resurrect their previously successful 80s slasher franchise: Camp Miasma. An amalgam of all the big 70s and especially 80s “meat-cleaver-to-the-head” movies, Schoenbrun cleverly interweaves both the on and off-screen references that we all know into the story of Kris’s pursuit of reclusive Camp Miasma star, Billy Presley, played by Gillian Anderson.
As an inveterate nerd, Kris spends an inordinate amount of time, money, and effort getting Billy to be in what everyone above and around her assumes is just a cameo role. However, for Kris, casting her means more than they – or really, she – realise it does.
The better version of Last Night in Soho, what Miasma does so brilliantly is manage to seamlessly navigate a very complex spaghetti junction of topics dealing with sex, queerness, relationships (both personal and professional), cultural awakenings, and the pros and cons of being a slasher fan. All overtly discussed at length and yet never losing dramatic engagement or a sense of mystery.
Very pleasingly, like a few emergent filmmakers, Schoenbrun delights in holding back or throwing us curveballs should we deign to ‘understand’ all of what they’re saying. All that and without ever seeming smartarse-y or aloof.
There isn’t a word count in the world endless enough to smugly wang on ad nauseam about all the references noticed herein, and plus, you wanna spot them for yourself. Suffice it to say, it was great to see how much 1964’s Kwaidan played a part.
Otherwise, Teenage Sex and Death – for all its relevance, its societal, political and cultural weight, and its surrealistic, genuinely Lynchian airs – is funny and entertaining. Chats about the virtues of junk food and cartoonishly bloody interludes with the Camp Miasma killer, Little Death, are meant as an unashamed celebration of slasher mayhem. Even the bizarre fact of Little Death’s ceiling vent helmet – which becomes poignantly relevant late on – is also a fittingly silly addition to the film within the film.
The final word, should go to Anderson and Einbender, though, as the film is almost a two-hander. The pair absolutely inhabit their characters, grounding the mad blizzards swirling around them and making professional artists who, in real life, often seem irritating, relatable, and vulnerable. This film is a triumph.
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