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The third feature film from celebrated indie filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, (henceforth referred to as At Camp Miasma) is her most mainstream project but even then this is an arthouse feature that is more of a tributary feeding into a mainstream than the usual mass market summer fare.

Reviewing At Camp Miasma is a difficult undertaking both because some of the film’s most interesting and daring takes require ‘spoilers’ for the events of the feature and because the nature of the film is much closer to the dream logic of something like Mulholland Drive than yet another slasher loose in the woods dispatching adult actors attempting to portray teens.

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On the most surface level the plot is this: indie filmmaker Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is getting the chance to pitch to the mainstream studios about reviving a dormant property, Camp Miasma, a slasher from the 80s with more than a score of sequels but source material that is deeply problematic and transphobic. Kris, a queer filmmaker for whom the original films are a foundational element of her own awakening, is aware that the studio interest in her is to ‘woke-wash’ the property in hopes of avoiding a disastrous online campaign against the movie when they release it. She has traveled deep into snowy mountains to meet with Billie Preston (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original Camp Miasmaand who has become a retired recluse in hopes of bringing her onto the project, but Billie is nothing like what Kris expected and soon over the course of a few days in the isolated and abandoned camp where the first in the franchise had been filmed, reality and fantasy blur for the two women as they untangle what the films mean to them and to each other.

On another level, At Camp Miasma is about the relationship between story and audience: is the audience the master of the story, or does the story in fact create its own audience? When reality blurs for Kris and Billie, that blurring also bleeds into the audience watching the film about the pair of women. The outdoor sets throughout At Camp Miasma have a deeply artificial appearance, one that I found reminiscent of the planet set from the original Star Trek series, something so powerfully artificial, particularly to modern eyes, that the effect in this film must have been intentional.

And on yet another level, At Camp Miasma is about coming into your own sexually, fully accepting yourself, with all of your flaws and limitations, and loving yourself for who you are, and in that process finally being able to accept love from others. In the end, it is a deeply committed love story between Kris and Billie where each woman finally finds the half that they have been desperately missing.

And perhaps the most fun level of At Camp Miasma is the rich and keen-eyed satire of the entire slasher genre. I have said before and will likely say again in the future that slashers are my least loved of all horror films. Far too often I find them dull, repetitive, and populated by bland characterless characters to ever be engaged with the often less than intelligent plots as they unfold. I did not find Scream to be particularly witty, nor did I find X inventive, but even with a limited affection for slashers I found much of the meta-humor in At Camp Miasma quite enjoyable. This would make quite an interesting double feature with The Cabin in the Woods as a pair of films commenting on the genre that their film makers deeply care about.

Is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma for you? I cannot say; even for people I know well, much less total strangers on the internet, I would have a hard time knowing if this movie will work for them. I can say that I enjoyed it and that I did not consider my time at the theater watching it wasted, but also I know I am unlikely to watch it again. If queerness is something that puts you off, then this film is not for you. If films that blur their own reality is something that you find that breaks your suspension of disbelief, then this is not for you. But if those things do not apply to you and you find yourself engaged with strange and unusual arthouse fare, then give this film a try.

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Spoilers for Obsession

I recently rewatched the entirety of Obsession, my favorite horror film of the last few years and possibly my favorite film of 2026. Dune part 3 and Avengers: Doomsday will have a very tough time beating it out for that top spot in my heart.

Obsession and its cast, in particular Inde Navarrette, have been getting a ton of praise for their work and this blog post is yet another one to add to that pile but I think this morning I want to dive deep and dissect an element of Navarrette’s performance that I have a difficult time articulating.

Navarrette is not a novice to acting, having been a recurring cast member on Superman & Loisand appeared in the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, but it is unquestionable that her turn as Nikki Freeman, the doomed and tragic object of a young man’s obsession in this year’s breakout and surprising hit, has catapulted her into a very wide and public recognition.

In Obsession, Navarrette performs effectively as two distinct characters: Nikki Freeman, free of the wish’s curse and the ‘Nikki’ that is cursed to love Baron ‘Bear’ Bailey ‘more than anyone in the fucking world.’ I shall refer to these characters as True Nikki and Freaky Nikki to make it clear which is which.

In terms of screen time, the audience has little exposure to True Nikki; she is a voice on a telephone call, a friend chatting happily and teasing Bear at the bar on trivia night, and exposes herself emotionally for a few moments as Bear drives her home, revealing that she is not happy and emotionally keeps her feelings deeply contained saying that when she has a crush on a guy ‘no one knows.’

In contrast, for the majority of the film, Navarrette performs as Freaky Nikki, who is loud, unsubtle, manipulative, and unable to contain her feelings at all, possessing none of the subtlety of the character we were introduced to. So far this might be considered a rather standard Jekyll and Hyde sort of portrayal that has been a fairly standard performance since the 1930s, but there are layers and levels to Navarrette’s approach that I think belie this simplification.

While True Nikki and Freaky Nikki are poles apart in terms of the nature of their characters this is not usually played to exaggeration in the film. Freaky Nikki is a very different character, one the audience is well aware of and possibly would even be aware if there were not instances of True Nikki momentarily and terrifyingly regaining her body. The voices of the two Nikkis are slightly different, using different tonalities in their normal speech. I do not have a particularly well-trained ear, but it sounds to me that True Nikki’s voice is in a very slightly deeper register than Freaky Nikki’s. True Nikki sounds more composed and restrained while Freaky Nikki sounds more ‘girlish,’ perhaps a performance that might be more attractive to a man who lacks the self-confidence to take the emotional risks that courtship and dating require.

Even this, Navarrette’s performance as two different Nikkis, is not the element that astounds me. That moment from the film’s final scene is something I struggle to adequately describe.

Freaky Nikki, certain that Bear doesn’t love her, turns to the same One Wish Willow device that Bear used to enslave, creating a Pseudo-Bear that is obsessed with her as she is with him. This ‘romance’ is short-lived. Bear, seeking an escape from the horrors he birthed into the world, has taken a lethal overdose of pills. (True to Bear’s nature of being unable to commit and face up to unpleasant truths, he had begun to try and make himself vomit up the overdose, but Freaky Nikki’s wish derailed that.)

For a moment the two are ‘happy,’ but then the overdose works its lethal action and Pseudo-Bear dies in Freaky Nikki’s arms. Freaky Nikki wails and cries at the death of her obsession. She nearly ends her own life, but Bear’s death frees her from the wish’s curse suddenly becoming True Nikki again. There is a moment of silence before she throws Bear’s corpse to the floor and sobs.

In a single take, we watch Freaky Nikki transition to True Nikki with both versions warped by the throes of sobbing and wailing, and yet in a manner I cannot quite put my finger on, these are very different wails, very different cries. Freaky Nikki is wailing at the loss of her Bear, and True Nikki is wailing at the horror and torments she has been forced to endure. Both wails are soul-wrenching produced by utter sorrow but are also utterly different, produced by the same actor without a break or a cut to give her time and space to shift emotionally. She wails from two very different reasons, and it is evident in the nature of her cries but in a method so subtle I cannot say precisely why they are different. I can only recognize that they are distinct, that they are two different characters wailing for two different reasons that are easily observed but seemingly impossible to define.

Inde Navarrette has earned every accolade heaped upon her for this performance, and I shall watch her career with great interest.