→ Champion of the modern metaphor: Jane Schoenbrun. Their films always make brilliant use of metaphor and other non-literal storytelling devices. Self-aware as ever, Schoenbrun leverages this tendency as a recurring gag in the film.

→ Counting Crows. You’ll never think of A Long December the same way, ever again.

→ Sex, climax, and catharsis. This is Schoenbrun’s most nakedly optimistic film to date. I Saw the TV Glow left me forever haunted. This film, despite often donning the clothes of an ‘80s slasher franchise, left me cheerful, inspired, and positively certain of the power of sex and identity.

→ Surrealism and meta humor. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma often takes aim at the comical, trite nature of the slasher genre. But it also doesn’t shy away from the more problematic tropes, including classic filmmakers’ nasty habit of positioning transgender identity as a villainous, hideous trait (e.g. Psycho).

→ Slasher films. (a sponsored bullet point).¹ This film is a unique blend between an homage and a takedown of the slasher genre. As a bonus, I thought I’d ask the owner of DiabolikDVD for his nine favorite slasher films you can pick up from his store. For a limited time, TNMN members get 10% on purchases $50 or more from Diabolik.

Hannah Einbinder has been typecast, and I’m not mad about it. Most known for her work alongside the singular Jean Smart in Hacks, Einbinder is once again acting opposite an aging, larger than life celebrity, portrayed by Gillian Anderson, in this cleverly written two-hander.

I’ve been wanting to see Einbinder make the leap to the big screen. It almost seems obvious, like a cleaver-wielding, blood-soaked slasher villain approaching in plain sight, that the marriage between Einbinder and Jane Schoenbrun would work so well.

In their most light-hearted work to date, Schoenbrun enlists Einbinder to play on the same dramatic seesaw she’s mastered in Hacks, deftly shifting the tone of the film back and forth between humor and drama and, this time, horror.

The film itself is at once a love letter, homage, and rebuke, of the slasher franchises that inspired it.

There are heaps and heaps of blood, often exploding like geysers from holes where heads are supposed to be. There’s some of the most inspired set design I’ve seen in recent works, including a wonderful decision to use mosaic, theater-style backdrops for scenes intended to showcase the vast remote campground that serves as the film’s primary setting.

Most of all, it’s refreshing to see Schoenbrun embrace their sillier side, while still not getting away from what they do best. To re-contextualize an entire genre of film, especially one as beloved as slasher flicks, and use it as a storytelling device for one queer woman’s journey towards sexual enlightenment and orgasm, is a true stroke of genius.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say "oh, neat."

→ The villain’s name, ‘Little Death’, is a thematically relevant double entendre. It is the literal English translation of la petite mort, a French idiom that refers to orgasm.

→ The crew revived a film-making technique from Bram Stoker’s Dracula by using in-camera matte paintings as backdrops. Production designer Matt Hyland’s words: “… you put this piece of glass a few feet away from the camera. Mostly, you see right through the glass as if it’s not there, but as you selectively paint imagery on it, from just that one vantage point of the lens, you start to create a live, in-camera blend of the painting — the fantasy world — and the real world.”