MUBIAcross their three feature films as a director, Jane Schoenbrun has used the iconography and visual language of horror films to chart their transition, and their changing relationship with their body. In We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, they were a floating head, fully dissociated from their physical form; in I Saw the TV Glow, the proverbial egg-crack moment is met with raw fear, then an acknowledgement that staying closeted is actually the far more terrifying option. In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the filmmaker returns to their body, rewiring their relationship with pleasure in the process.This intimate narrative is translated through the carnal appeal of slasher movies — “flesh and fluids,” as the film’s reclusive retired scream queen Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) puts it. Although it does feature some satisfyingly squishy moments, on the whole, the “sex” side of the equation is more prominent than the “death” one: This is an erotic dramedy in drag as an ‘80s slasher movie, told through the framework of a story about a queer filmmaker trying to craft a remake of a “problematic classic.” It’s very heady, and very in its head — dissociation, specifically during sex, is still a key element here — and its abstract elements do sometimes get in the way of the primal meat-on-meat aspects of a slasher movie. But when it all connects? Oh, baby.Every one of Schoenbrun’s movies gets a little more mainstream as well; this is not a criticism, merely an observation, and a reflection of the filmmaker’s growing stature within the industry. (World’s Fair premiered in a virtual sidebar at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, while Teenage Sex and Death just opened the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.) That’s all relative, of course: This is a deeply weird and deeply queer work of visionary cinema, and those who come to it looking for traditional slasher kicks may leave confounded, despite Schoenbrun’s clear affection for and knowledge of the subgenre.Gillian Anderson and Jane Schoenbrun on the set of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. | MUBIThat being said, this is Schoenbrun’s first to feature big-name actors: Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder stars alongside Anderson as Kris, the aforementioned queer filmmaker and a sort of stand-in for Schoenbrun as they make absurd comedy out of their experiences in the film industry. (One minor character, played by Castration Movie’s Louise Weard, is simply named “Queer Assistant.”) The humor in Teenage Sex and Death is goofy — Kris’ previous film was called Jouissance, and was a remake of Psycho “told from the perspective of the shower curtain” — and its references are eclectic: Patrick Fischler, best known to people who follow Jane Schoenbrun on social media as the guy who sees the witch behind the Winkie’s dumpster in Mulholland Drive, appears in a small role, for example.Kris has wrapped her entire life and sexuality around Camp Miasma, an ‘80s slasher series that’s equal parts Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th. Now, she’s driven out to the middle of nowhere to meet Billy, who’s since fallen off the face of the earth, to try to talk her into being in their remake of the original film. Anderson’s persona in this film is a gamble: She’s introduced wearing a purple fedora, and speaks in a Dolly Parton accent. It’s kind of off-putting until it becomes deeply seductive, and it could only work in a film as stylized as this one.The chemistry between Anderson and Einbinder helps as well, as their initial creative connection blossoms into a sexual one. Another through line in Schoenbrun’s work is that each of their films has a mantra of sorts: Here, it’s “If It Gets Too Real, You Can Always Turn It Off,” a home-video slogan for the original Camp Miasma that doubles as reassurance for Kris and Billy as they hesitantly dive into a psychosexual whirlpool that manifests as “a hole in the bottom of the lake where the movies come from.”Little Death’s spear, in all its phallic glory. | MUBIAt the bottom of that hole lives Little Death (Jack Haven), the problematic genderfluid killer from the Camp Miasma movies, who periodically emerges from his lair and dons a mask that’s supposed to be some kind of heating vent, but looks more like a Saw-meets-MC Escher torture device. From there, he sets out to liberate repressed campers with the erotic power of his phallic spear, a queer response to hunky slasher villains like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. The sequence where Little Death crosses over into the real world, turning movies into sex and sex into death and death into movies in an eternal cycle, is climactic in more ways than one. (With a name like Little Death, anything less would be a letdown.)Teenage Sex and Death doesn’t lean as hard into ethereal imagery as I Saw the TV Glow — here, a gas station is sometimes just a gas station, although the film’s matte paintings and miniatures do not disappoint in terms of striking stylization. Nor does the cinematography, particularly in scenes from the original Camp Miasma, in which Schoenbrun and cinematographer Eric Yue faithfully re-create the burnt-sienna look of aged celluloid while having fun with the film-within-a-film’s clichéd content. These scenes click, but the same can’t be said of the film’s other attempt at a slasher-movie massacre, which is set to the Counting Crows song “Long December” and is just a little too lengthy and a little too detached to really connect.Still, a filmmaker taking a big swing is always appreciated, and if nothing else, Schoenbrun’s choices are always interesting. It’s all just a framing device for the film’s erotically charged exploration of the loss of control, anyway, although the Easter-egg element in Teenage Sex and Death is far stronger than that description implies. We get a reference to Bruce Springsteen’s sister, for example, as well as the (since disproven) rumor that Jamie Lee Curtis was born intersex. There’s even a meta acknowledgement that, although this is a meta-slasher, it’s “not like New Nightmare, though.” It’s a highly personal work, a defense of problematic favs, and a movie that only Jane Schoenbrun could make. Let them guide you, and they’ll take you where you need to go. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 13. It opens in theaters through MUBI on August 7.