I really wanted to like Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. I enjoy horror movies about horror movies, I love a ridiculous 80s slasher, and I will always have time for a movie that takes something that looks trashy and disposable and asks why we become so emotionally attached to it. And this movie is VERY much about that.
This is part slasher movie deconstruction, part bizarre lesbian sexual fever dream and part examination of why we care so much about bad horror movies in the first place. And to be fair I really liked a lot of it. I loved how we got the entire history of the fictional Camp Miasma franchise through posters, VHS tapes, merchandise and newspaper clippings. It feels like someone has constructed an entire shitty horror franchise that never actually existed, and then somehow convinced me that I remember watching it when I was sixteen. And then the movie starts getting really weird.
I liked how the movie is about how the things we find frightening can also be the things we find exciting and sexy. It’s sort of in the title, and it’s why the killer is called ‘Little Death’ (la petite mort in French refers to the brief loss of consciousness or transient, dizzying state of exhaustion experienced immediately after a sexual climax - this was probably the most obvious metaphor in the entire movie).
I also liked how the movie made me realise we, horror movie fans, want to be both the killer and the victim, at the same time. The victim sees through the eyes of the killer, as the killer kills the victim. It may not be what the director intended, but that’s what I got from it.
My only problem with the movie is that I think it’s more interesting than it is entertaining. I enjoyed it, but I wanted more of the death than the sex. There is also considerably less actual slasher action than the title might suggest. If you’re going into this expecting Friday the 13th with a lesbian subplot, you’re probably going to be disappointed. I think Final Girls does a better job at deconstructing 80s slasher films, this was just more intellectual about it.
So I did enjoy it, but I wouldn’t rate it among the best movies of the year. But I think many people will, which is great.