{"id":569281,"date":"2026-08-14T23:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T23:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/569281\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T23:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T23:38:09","slug":"teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma-horror-sex-and-trans-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/569281\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: Horror, sex and trans identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Horror is a key space for transgression \u2013 presenting ideas and images that confront our concept of normality and upset the established order of the world.<\/p>\n

Notions of gender, like sex, are debated and torn to shreds in horror.<\/p>\n

One of the precursors of the slasher, Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Psycho, was daring in so many ways, not least that its villain Norman Bates was a cross-dresser who committed murders in the guise of his long-dead mother.<\/p>\n

The Camp Miasma series is a sibling of sorts to the Friday the 13th franchise, a ground zero for \u201ccabin in the woods\u201d horror that frequently focuses on the tearing and mutilation of young, nubile flesh.<\/p>\n

Little Death \u2013 the \u201cJason\u201d of Miasma \u2013 is in the throes of gender panic, triggering them into a murderous rage. It\u2019s the kind of monstrous portrayal of transgenderism that\u2019s present not just in Norman Bates, but in The Silence of the Lambs\u2019 Buffalo Bill and Sleepaway Camp\u2019s Angela Baker, a major influence on Schoenbrun\u2019s new film.<\/p>\n

Schoenbrun identifies as trans and non-binary, much like the film\u2019s protagonist Kris, who\u2019s been saddled with rebooting the \u201cproblematic\u201d franchise for a modern era. <\/p>\n

The issue itself isn\u2019t fictional. While societal progress can be tracked through horror, from Night of the Living Dead to Alien to Jennifer\u2019s Body to Get Out, there\u2019s plenty that\u2019s retrograde, too, or has dated terribly. <\/p>\n

\"Slasher-horrorSlasher-horror Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is the third feature by director Jane Schoenbrun, a high-profile transgender filmmaker.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something Emmy Award winner Hannah Einbinder from Hacks, who plays Kris, has been mulling over lately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been rewatching some of the comedies I grew up with and they\u2019re just littered with transphobia, specifically: it\u2019s so flippant and so embedded,\u201c she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s caused me to reflect on the way in which this has been the subconscious messaging in culture for years and years and years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starring alongside her is Gillian Anderson as Billy Preston, the original Miasma film\u2019s \u201cfinal girl\u201d \u2013 a common horror trope in which a female character is left to climactically face off with the villain alone, usually in a state of undress.<\/p>\n

The X-Files legend says misogyny, racism and fat shaming are \u201crelentless\u201d in so many of the older films.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though, in Miasma, Jane [Schoenbrun] is speaking specifically to transphobia and misogyny, just even having the topic and the difficult reality being addressed in such an emotional way, it starts a conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the conversation needs to be had because it\u2019s still out there in subtle and not so subtle ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is Schoenbrun\u2019s third feature and continues their run of inward-looking, pop culture-brained and unsettling exercises in picking apart the subconscious.<\/p>\n

\"InIn her first feature film, Hacks star Hannah Einbinder plays a queer indie film director.<\/p>\n

Where their first two films, We\u2019re All Going to the World\u2019s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, were far more downbeat and frequently horrifying, Miasma invites its director and two stars to let their hair down.<\/p>\n

The film is about sex, first and foremost, and why society seems to have retreated so intensely away from sexual liberation in our films, our television, our culture and especially our own lives.<\/p>\n

\u201c[For our] younger generations, it has so much to do with the time spent on screens and how impersonal that is, and therefore how scary it is when there is real-life intimacy that is required to start an actual relationship,\u201d Anderson says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany are terrified to even have a phone conversation \u2026 they consider a Snapchat to be a conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could those things not have an impact on how one perceives something that is so intense as two human beings touching naked skin?\u201d<\/p>\n

Armed with a Southern twang and buckets of fried chicken, Anderson\u2019s Billy Preston initially appears to be something of a femme fatale for Kris, who ventures to the snowbound, hollowed-out set of the first Miasma where Preston now lives, hoping to lure her back for the reboot.<\/p>\n

\"GillianGillian Anderson as the seductive recluse, Billy Preston, who lives in the hollowed-out film set where she once found cinema stardom.<\/p>\n

As Teenage Sex and Death digs deeper into the psychology of Kris (specifically, her sexual frustration and inability to surrender to her urges), Anderson\u2019s performance begins to reflect how the actor herself is viewed by the public \u2013 most especially queer audiences, who feel seen by her work.<\/p>\n

Billy comes to serve as a kind of sexual guide through the maze of desire for Kris, who is in thrall to her natural magnetism.<\/p>\n

\u201cGillian and I have a similar philosophy, which is that the chemistry is either there or it isn\u2019t,\u201d Einbinder says. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019d done so much individual preparation that by the time we got together, it was \u2026 so clear what the movie would be, that it would work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so nervous because it was my first film and I wanted to do something really different, and with Gillian I was just completely at ease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson agrees. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first sat down for that reading, it just fell into place completely. That\u2019s not always the case. It just made it so much more powerful from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In previous interviews, Schoenbrun and Miasma\u2019s two leads have discussed at length the difficulty of making such a fearless and uncompromising film.<\/p>\n

\"KrisKris (Einbinder) and Billy (Anderson) find their attraction spiralling into psychosexual mania as the line between reality and fiction blurs.<\/p>\n

A24, who produced TV Glow, famously passed on the opportunity to sign on for Miasma, leading Schoenbrun to the small distribution label Mubi.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to read between the lines as to why major American studios are reluctant to throw their weight behind such an outspoken, transgender artist.<\/p>\n

What this reluctance belies, however, is just how hilarious, sexy and fun Schoenbrun\u2019s film actually is. <\/p>\n

Where their previous movies were about self-imposed prisons, Miasma is ultimately about liberation, living freely as yourself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first movie I\u2019ve made that really feels like it captures the fullness of my personality,\u201d Schoenbrun said recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorld\u2019s Fair and TV Glow are both movies that I made right after coming out, reflecting on the intensity of that time in my life. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so they were kind of using the screen to talk about dissociation, to talk about not being in one\u2019s body, to talk about living as voyeur.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miasma, then, is a strident ode to making sex enjoyable again \u2013 an idea shared by other contemporary films from Gregg Araki\u2019s I Want Your Sex to Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 Poor Things.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely vital that there are those representations out there,\u201d Anderson says. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere seem to be a few films over the past few years that have been much bolder [and more] explicit, but from a woman\u2019s perspective \u2026 engaging with the [idea of] women having desire.”<\/p>\n

\"DirectorDirector Jane Schoenbrun on location for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, her third feature.<\/p>\n

Despite their pronounced differences, Schoenbrun\u2019s two lead characters use their connection to grapple their way to shared freedom.<\/p>\n

For Einbinder\u2019s Kris, it\u2019s the freedom to enjoy sex for the first time. For Anderson\u2019s Billy, it\u2019s transcending the role that made them famous and returning to the public eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I love about the two of them is that they feel at once like complete opposites in their rhythm of talking, their view on life and the world, but their love language is cinema,\u201d says Anderson. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey find their way to each other through that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s real romance in it. They really do fall in love. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey bond on a really deep level, and some of that is related to similar experiences with fear and shame. It\u2019s possible to find kindred spirits in the world, regardless of age or circumstance or life perspective. There\u2019s something beautiful in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the great ironies is that horror has always been a no-go for Anderson. <\/p>\n

Even during her years playing Dana Scully (The X-Files\u2019 episode, \u201cHome,\u201d is infamous as one of the most disturbing hours of television ever aired), she steered clear of scary movies in her personal life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a horrible experience watching a horror film way too young, stoned, and have not watched a horror movie since,\u201d she says with a laugh, admitting Miasma may finally have prepared her to journey into the darkness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve learned so much about the genre and its subgenres that it has made me want to investigate it a little more. So I\u2019ll see if I can dare myself to embrace it a little more than I have in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Einbinder, an avowed horror fan since seeing the 2006 film Silent Hill at an impressionable age, Miasma invited her to put herself inside the stories she\u2019s treasured for years, in a way that defanged them, and made them safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cToward the end of the film, I\u2019m going through the emotional experience of terror and I\u2019m feeling that legitimately,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut the rest of the time we see the cameras, we see the set, we know what goes into the blood. It\u2019s demystified in the process of the making.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best way to venture into horror, they both reckon, is one that could be summed up by the iconic tagline for Wes Craven\u2019s The Last House on the Left: \u201cTo avoid fainting, keep repeating, \u2018It\u2019s only a movie, it\u2019s only a movie\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re ever watching a horror movie, remember that just off screen there\u2019s a guy with a big microphone on a pole, and there\u2019s somebody nearby eating popcorn, and somebody\u2019s over there on a call,\u201d Einbinder says.<\/p>\n

Anderson adds, \u201cAnd the blood tastes like mint!\u201d.<\/p>\n

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is playing at the New Zealand International Film Festival and opens in cinemas nationwide on August 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Horror is a key space for transgression \u2013 presenting ideas and images that confront our concept of normality…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[95,1975,10040,13182,144085,634,156,224441,410,18558,302,280299,3025,111,139,69,280300,520,7680,10706,13917,1361,50454,102],"class_list":["post-569281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-and","tag-at","tag-camp","tag-cinemas","tag-clearly","tag-death","tag-entertainment","tag-genres","tag-horror","tag-identity","tag-its","tag-miasma","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pronounced","tag-relationship","tag-sex","tag-teenage","tag-telling","tag-that","tag-trans","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}