Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is not necessarily a particularly scary movie, especially for viewers who are used to modern horror films built around jump scares and sustained suspense. The film certainly embraces classic horror and slasher tropes, with an overwhelming amount of slapstick, fake blood, and some genuinely gnarly kills. However, Jane Schoenbrun is far more interested in creating a strange and unsettling atmosphere than delivering a straightforward horror experience designed to keep audiences constantly on edge.
Read our review of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Much like Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, the movie’s horror comes more from its imagery and ideas than traditional scares. There are several startling images and sequences that can stick with you long after the movie ends, and the increasingly surreal tone can leave you feeling uneasy even when nothing particularly frightening is happening. The film also has a playful, often absurd sense of humor that prevents the violence from becoming relentlessly grim. Even when the movie gets bloody, it frequently feels more like an exaggerated homage to classic slashers than an attempt to terrify the audience.
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For horror fans expecting something closer to The Conjuring, Sinister, or other major scare-driven movies from the last 15 to 20 years, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma probably will not be the most frightening film you’ve seen. There are no constant jump scares, and the movie rarely relies on long stretches of traditional tension or suspense. Instead, Schoenbrun uses the language of horror to create something more surreal, provocative, and occasionally disturbing. It can certainly be unsettling, bloody, and weird, but calling it an outright scary movie may give the wrong impression of what kind of horror experience it actually provides.
