Horror has a very complicated and closely aligned connection to queerness. From the idea of othering the “monster” to how films stitch us into identifying with certain points of view, certain characters, horror as a genre has playing a significant role in identify formation for those who fall outside of the dominant cultural groups. The documentary The Celluloid Closet covers how Hollywood has queer coded villains, and specifically aligned transness with villainy. Current online discourse has been a backlash against any film which centres characters that aren’t straight white cis-men. Camp Miasma arrives amid this history and this current climate with something profound and haunting to say, something complicated and self-reflective, and it does this while making a gorgeously unsettling, wittingly funny film that somehow sees the beauty in the monster.
Miasma refers to a foreboding, a danger. We are all more familiar with the meaning of camp. Writer/director Schoenbrun plays with language here, including in the name of her movie serial killer, Little Death, a translation of a French phrase for orgasm. Some of what is going on here is a search for the ability to cum. But it’s not that simple. It is about reaching a level of connection to experience something as fulfilling and satisfying as orgasm, connection with others, connection with one’s self. This isn’t as straight forward as you might assume. For many exiled from their own identities, their own selves, through cultural oppression, reaching this state represents a liberation.
The slasher genre, so full of history of condemning sexual liberation, is the perfect vessel for finding that very freedom. Schoenbrun inverts so many of the assumptions of the genre in the way that queer/trans audiences have been inverting the characterizations of themselves in these movies. While the film doesn’t try to be scary (most of the horror movies elements are played for… well, camp) the film is unsettling in otherways; in how it gives permission to explore, to see things differently. This is the very opposite of how a morality play works.
Einbinder and Anderson are excellent here, with Anderson doing both a tribute and pastiche on Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, even down to the turban. She is ethereal and spilling over with subtext and presence and gives the film a larger than life feeling. Also incredible is Jack Haven as Little Death himself. This character blew away any expectations I may have had and even without hardly any lines, Haven delivers a haunting portrait that balances all the pathos and humour captured in he character.
And Camp Miasma is a simply gorgeous film. Schoenbrun utilizes classic horror film styles and combines the artificial sets with practical in a manner that creates something visually incredible and beautiful to look at. It creates the world in which this specific story can exist and gives it room to breathe, allowing the audience to reflect and absorb the layers of the story.
So much of what Camp Miasma was saying feels familiar yet unsaid, perhaps having been fleeting thoughts we’ve had while consuming horror media from outside the mainstream perspective. Miasma offers it to us explicitly, even if not literally or without some room for personal interpretation. It further entrenches Schoenbrun as one of the most compelling film makers working today.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Starring: Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, Jack Haven, Patrick Fischler, Kevin McDonald, Eva Victor, Dylan Baker
Writer/Director: Jane Schoenbrun
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