Film Review – Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow” represented a major step forward in the career of writer/director Jane Schoenbrun. The picture didn’t attract a major audience, but it found viewers capable of connecting to its enigmatic and perhaps deeply personal ways. Schoenbrun set out to make a brain bleeder, and one that wasn’t easily decoded, relying on tried and true Lynchian ways to fog meaning with artistry, generating a puzzle some viewers were delighted to solve. Schoenbrun returns to their filmmaking fetishes with “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which carries marketing efforts selling the feature as a sort of riff on the influence and problematic ways of slasher cinema from the 1980s. Of course, the offering isn’t really about satire or even criticism, instead focusing on sexual experiences and personal connections while trauma and pleasure are set up for analysis. “Teenage Sex and Death” keeps Schoenbrun in their comfort zone, but viewers are left with a picture that doesn’t fulfill on a dramatic level, as the endeavor is more interested in hitting a cosmic G-spot instead, which has its cinematic limitations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com