To say people have been keenly anticipating Jane Schoenbrun’s latest feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is an understatement. The director is certainly quite a Filmhouse staff favourite, with I Saw The TV Glow being one of our staff picks in our birthday programme which we recently played in June and July - but not to worry if you missed it, as we give you another chance to catch this devastating psychological horror as part of our Looking Camp Right in the Eye season, a selection of films which are all suggested further watching as films that are all either inspirations to Camp Miasma or directly referenced within it (and, well, one that is my programmer’s prerogative…).

Former silent actress, Norma Desmond (played by Gloria Swanson), is a glamorous recluse in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard - a character who mirrors Gillian Anderson’s mysterious former final girl so directly it’s even referenced in the film, with Anderson‘s character, Billy(!) Preston making comment on it. We could not pass up the opportunity to pair these two together and any chance to present Sunset Boulevard in our programme is always a given. 

Another film overtly referenced in Camp Miasma through imagery is 1983's Sleepaway Camp. Released to unfavourable reviews, this summer camp slasher has been reappraised in recent years, going on to garner a cult following and undoubtedly having one of the most memorable final shots in film. 

In a red carpet interview with film leads Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, Einbinder discusses the horrors that are in Camp Miasma's lineage, with the Emmy-winning actress saying the film “…focuses on characters who have been incredibly impacted by the movies they’ve watched”, to which Anderson replies, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, [that] is the one that I saw when I was way too young”. The 1974 film is considered one of the greatest horrors of all time, setting the bar for subsequent slasher films and creating a legacy around the film being a ‘video nasty’ and the moral panic that ensued upon the film’s release. 

Whilst watching Camp Miasma, there were tonal elements which reminded me of John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness starring Sam Neill. With Sam Neill’s recent passing, it is now bittersweet to include this film in our programme. Neill plays an insurance investigator who is looking into the disappearance of a horror novelist. Reality begins to blur as the investigation unfurls, with Carpenter playing with the audience’s expectations of Lovecraftian-esque meta horror. 

And lastly, don’t miss the chance to watch one of the first camp slashers, Friday the 13th presented by The Evolution of Horror podcast hosts who we are very excited to be hosting.  

After even further ‘watching’?

It pains me somewhat that one film that I happened to watch completely by chance after Camp Miasma evades me in terms of film rights and screening materials, so it's unable to be brought into the programme. Sneaking a note about it here in this copy might be the only chance I can get to try to boost its reputation. Andrew Davis’s The Final Terror follows a group of campers who realise a feral killer is out to get them. Davis was mentored by all-time great cinematographer, Haskell Wexler, and you can tell by the stunning photography in this film. The Final Terror was filmed and completed in 1981, but didn’t get released until 1983, partly as the distributor for the film didn’t feel the film was gory enough and just misses its due as being credited as one of the early slashers especially within a ‘camp’ setting.