Why Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma is romance, actually

evemrileyauthor
Aug 26
3 min read

Updated: Aug 31

What with editing my recent book, I've had Liquids on the brain. In desperate need of an escape, I left my editing desk for the movie theater to see a lot of a very different liquid—and I was surprised and delighted. Here's my take on why I think Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a romance—even if there's more than a little gore, too.

Still from Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder. Billy (left) and Kris stand together in a grocery store. They are both soaked in blood. They look into one another's eyes and lock hands on the grocery cart handle.

The Premise

Camp Miasma is back. After too many reboots, seas of cheap merch, and endless refusals from the original star to return, the series is in dire need of a fresh take. Enter Kris (Hannah Einbinder), a young indie filmmaker on the cusp of her big Hollywood break. She heads off to a deserted summer camp in the Pacific Northwest where the reclusive Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), Camp Miasma's original “last girl," is living out her retirement.

What begins as a “business meeting” turns into an exploration of queer desire and the subversion of lots of horror tropes, featuring a super camp slasher villain (Little Death, played by Jack Haven). Straight from the imagination of Jane Schoenbrun (who herself spent fifth grade watching Nightmare on Elm Street) comes a fun, camp, slasher-meets-romance that will have you on the edge of your seat. And remember, folks, "if it gets too real, you can always turn it off..."

The Love triangle

Still from Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Kris (left) and Billie are watching the first Camp Miasma film on a projector. Kris wears a blue sweater and jeans and looks emotional. Billie is wearing a dress with shoulder pads and what looks like a turban and has a pad of paper and a pen.

Camp Miasma touches on all of the important relationships in the horror and movies; between predator and prey, watcher and watched, director and actor, star and camera. All of these are crystallized in the blossoming romantic relationship between filmmaker Kris and retired starlet Billy. Gillian Anderson does a fabulous turn as the glamorous perpetual performer, and her status as an IRL sapphic icon adds another delicious layer of dramatic irony. Kris's "my work is my life" habit of controlling her emotions by intellectualizing them is no match for Billy's sharp eye and genuine warmth; if anything, she is the director.

Billy is twice Kris’s age, but they both have a very similar relationship with our monster, "Little Death”—a murdered trans child who returns to enact revenge on the other campers. The horror genre often has queer-coded villains while also depicting misogynistic, gender-based violence. What happens when the slasher's POV is internalized? Little Death (wink wink) ends up being a part of Billy and Kris's relationship—as does the titillating combination of power and submission when the divides between voyeur and looked-at person blur and perspectives combine.

	Horror	Romance
Little Death	Blood-gushing violence	His name is literally orgasm in French.
massive spear	Stabbing and murder	You know what else involves, ahem, penetration...
Scary Air-vent POV	Slow inevitability of impending death and gore	What's a little voyeuristic role-play between FMCs?
Horror movie soundtrack	Crescendos into scary silences, the sounds of tearing flesh	But it's a romantic dinner for two?

The playfulness

It's not all academic; Schoenberg loves to blur the lines between intellectual and emotional, reality and fiction. Sometimes the icy mountain background is real; sometimes it is a painted movie set. The whole movie has a dreamlike quality, and the “real” characters (like Kris’s absentee agent and terrible girlfriend) feel deliberately cartoonish. As much as the film is about Kris and Billy's connection, it is also a silly love letter to the slasher genre (think the bimbo running from danger, parody jump scares, and a deadpan severed head saying, "Bummer.")

A meta-villain?

Little Death (played by Jack Haven) from Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Little Death wears a white hazmat suit and wields a large spear over his shoulder. His face is obscured by a traditional square airvent.

And while we're on the subject, maybe it's just me, but is Little Death almost, well... cute? His trident-like spear and air-vent helmet are very old-fashioned diver. The permeability of his blinkered air-vent POV nod to the staleness of the series (and the horror genre) and how TV portrayals of love shape how we see our real lives.

Horror? Romance? Both? Overall, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is fun, sexy, weird, and thought-provoking. I would recommend it for all horror/romance fans this upcoming spooky season!

P.S. If you, too, are into "flesh and fluids," unexpected domestic bliss, and healing through intimacy, then check out my newest romance, Liquids!

Preorder Liquids!

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