I Saw the TV Glow was one of my favourite films of 2024, and this is writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow up. A gay filmmaker, Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is hired to direct a new instalment of the long dormant slasher franchise Camp Miasma, that started in 1980. Typical of the time, the series of movies featured horny teens getting skewered by a seemingly indestructible foe called Little Death. As the increasingly ridiculous set of films came out, each was less successful than the last. The whole history of the franchise is brilliantly depicted over the opening credits.
With her indie sensibilities, Kris wants to do something more than a straight sequel or re-boot and is keen to get the actress who played the final girl in the first film, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), to star. She travels to meet the reclusive Billy only to find her living in the campground that was used in the filming. The more time that Kris spends with Billy, the more the lines between reality and the world of Little Death blur.
Like I Saw the TV Glow, this is a hard film to categorise. There are long periods where we see the original Camp Miasma, superbly given a period and genre feel by Schoenbrun, so you could call it a horror movie. But if it is, it is more psychological than slasher as meeting Billy forces Kris to examine her inability to achieve sexual fulfilment, and whether her seeing Camp Miasma at eight years old is connected to that. It is also very funny, with its over the top depiction of gushing blood, and sly digs at the movie industry. A Zoom call where Kris tries to sell her vision to studio bigwigs and a ‘Queer Assistant’ was a comedic highpoint.
I had not seen Einbinder before and was knocked out by her impassioned and vulnerable performance. Anderson is quite hammy, with references to Nora Desmond seeming apt, but is clearly having a lot of fun.
It did not quite connect with me in the same way as their previous film, but Schoenbrun is definitely a formidable and original talent.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10