This is probably not the path that fans of Hannah Einbinder might have expected the Emmy winner to take following the fifth and final season of Hacks. But then again, Einbinder’s turn in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is truly stunning, much as her role as the flappable assistant to the unflappable aging comedian (multi-Emmy-winner Jean Smart) in Hacks.
Einbinder and Camp Miasma’s wunderkind indie director Jane Schoenbrun were in town Friday night for the film’s Canadian première at Fantasia and, not surprisingly, received a tumultuous reception with a five-minute standing ovation after the screening at Concordia’s Hall Theatre. Yeah, Camp Miasma more than meets the mandatory Fantasia esoteric standard.
Camp Miasma is both a no holds barred salute to and a wonderfully wicked send-up of the slasher-flick genre. Einbinder is cast as Kris, an up-and-coming sensitive director hired by a Hollywood studio to resurrect the Camp Miasma series in a woke-ish kind of way.
But Kris has different intentions. She would like to conscript the girl who starred in the first episode and then turned her back on the movie biz — think Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard. The girl, Billy, is now a reclusive adult (Gillian Anderson) and so Camp Miasma springs to life, love and gore.
The casting and style are inspired. Its execution would leave Friday the 13th’s Jason salivating.
Einbinder’s Kris is fragile and tightly wound, while Ava, her Hacks character, is flaky and wired. Nor do the two characters resemble one another physically, thanks to hair, makeup and glasses. But there are thematic similarities. Hacks is a salute to as well as send-up of the comedy world that also devours its players.
“I would say that on paper there are some similarities,” says Einbinder in an interview with Schoenbrun at Le Nouvel Hotel prior to the screening. “The way that they manifest. They are from totally different worlds in tone and style. Initially, I thought there were these similarities, but once I got into the film, it was (different).”
In days gone by, Hollywood studios would have balked at getting involved with a Camp Miasma, believing it to be too fringy, twisted and weird. But thanks to the success of films like the wonky, multi-Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, the needle has shifted. Indeed, Camp Miasma opens Aug. 14 at theatres throughout the country.
Hannah Einbinder, left, and Gillian Anderson in a scene from Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Handout
“Yeah, they used to tell me that I was too fringy, twisted and weird,” cracks Schoenbrun, creator of such indie hits as We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. “Now they’re paying me the big bucks.”
“Oh yeah, baby,” a grinning Einbinder retorts. “Also, horror is having a sort of cultural resurgence. It’s a great time.”
It’s also a great time for Einbinder to showcase her acting versatility. She began as a standup comic, appearing at Just for Laughs as a New Face in 2019 and cited on Variety’s 10 Comics to Watch list in 2021. She got her break shortly thereafter in the first of the Hacks series. Actually, she likes to mention that her teen self was a champion competitive cheerleader.
But she tackles new ground in Camp Miasma, displaying a sort of touching vulnerability, awakening and desire unlike what viewers have seen so far. Doubtless, she will be a force on the film front.
“I think that both of these pieces of art are reflections of a wide range of the human experience,” says Einbinder, up for another Emmy for Hacks in September. “This film contains a lot of pain and there are a lot of laugh out loud moments, too. That’s the kind of stuff I feel drawn to as an artist, because I don’t think anything is purely dramatic or purely comedic … (Camp Miasma) is the epitome of what I really want to do — vulnerable, honest storytelling that will be important to people.”
While other actors with her bona fides may have been reluctant to jump into this kind of project, Einbinder had no qualms whatsoever about diving into Camp Miasma.
“I think that creativity inherently requires risk,” Einbinder says. “And risk is what makes things good.”
Schoenbrun had been a big fan of Einbinder in Hacks but was really drawn to her after catching her 2024 HBO standup comedy special Everything Must Go.
“I really felt that she had this physical command of herself but also an awareness of how that looks and feels on camera and how to push that into a place that feels almost psychotic. And I thought I could play with that in a way that would lead to something really exciting,” Schoenbrun says.
The two plan to work again.
“Of course, I’m not finished with Hannah … I want to work with her 100 times!” exalts Schoenbrun, who is next taking on a TV project for Netflix, an adaptation of the graphic novel Black Hole “about these teenagers giving each other STDs that turns them into monsters.”
Schoenbrun has long been a devotee of slasher fare, but not so much Einbinder.
“No, this was my introduction to the slasher sub-genre,” Einbinder says. “My horror palate was more like Stephen King and supernatural stuff. Comedy horror, like the Saw franchise.”
Has Einbinder’s mom, original Saturday Night Live cast member Laraine Newman, caught the film?
Not yet, but no doubt that she will, her daughter believes: “She’s a huge horror fan.”
Not a shocker, as the line between comedy and horror becomes increasingly more blurred.
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