There's a clip I always think of when I think of bigots in America. There was an American Bandstand youtube thing I saw where the audience was digging and dancing and singing along and loving it, until the majority white audience saw that it was a black man singing and then they went cold. So much of American racism is based on the idea you don't like certain things even if you actually have shown yourself to like them. Bigotry is stupid, because it requires the person who believes it to think that entire races and religious beliefs can be dismissed because they are different than yours simply because it's not yours. It's the absolute worst way to deal with humans, as some of the biggest assholes can be any race, creed, sexual orientation, you name it, just as some of the best can be as well.
I don't want or need to say that I am pro-transgender because I find it distracting/stupid to argue otherwise. I think everyone deserves body autonomy. Period. If Pete Hegseth wants to shoot himself up with testosterone, if people want fake breasts, or whatever, that's just as cool to me as if someone wants to change their sex. The modern Republican party doesn't believe in the rule of law as there is no rule that they can apply to themselves and the people they hate equally. Law would suggest all body modification is wrong or none of it is. This isn't a Christian nation, because there is no denomination that rules us all. Southern Baptists and Northern Protestants aren't on the same page. Shit, there's whole subcultures of Christian religious beliefs that don't have anything to do with the bible. All of it is too stupid to really consider, except we're living it. If it hurts no one, people should be able to do what they want. If some man or woman wants to have sex with a tentacle dildo, that's their business and they can go with whatever God figure they do or don't believe in.
But the world doesn't exist under the rule of law, and as fascism is taking over the conservative movement in America, it means that discourse has also coarsened. For a normal critic, what that also means is that any perceived slight to a minority community can seem like an attack, partly because Elon Musk thought he could win by trying to attack THE ODYSSEY for casting a trans actor. (Elliot Page, it should be noted, has the best line in that film.) This all said, the fact that TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA sits at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes is both fair but also kinda bullshit. That's not to say critics didn't like or love it, I'm not going to suggest that anyone is pulling punches or lying. But a lot of critics are more likely to be sympathetic to a transgender filmmaker than they are Rob Marshall. As I am. And as well they should be. But it also means that there are external factors that make saying "I don't like a transgendered filmmaker's movie" a loaded statement.
The politics of criticism is so weird right now especially because no one has any power as a critic any more. Mostly because most people don't read criticism just ratings, and partly because movies have increasing made themselves binary. TOY STORY 5, SUPERGIRL, MOANA, SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY, so much of the summer are products, and audiences have accepted this to a certain extent. Just as the audience for smaller films is mostly limited to the people who pay attention. Obviously, there's hope and reasons to think audiences have grown tired of fast food cinema on whole, but McDonald's isn't going out of business any time soon. And as much as most audiences don't go necessarily for art, they do get that films should be more than just porn, but that's what Hollywood has become for the most part. This has fully broken a lot of genres. The desire for marketable material versus having taste and thinking something is a film that should be made has upended the system where even reasonably smart people are considering the marketplace. It's because they have to. It's a shit system where people can direct THE FLASH and get a TV show going with the same company because of good soldiering.
If you'll allow me, I'm not going to talk about the stupid side of the culture war any more. Everything is complicated, but it's complicated because everything is incredibly dumb right now. You'll just have to trust that whatever I'm saying it's in good faith, and meant with the noblest of intentions.
I found TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA to be terrible. It's not a bad film, technically, or that side of it, but I think I hate it. It is totally watchable, and if you like sex in cinema, you get some of it, and I'm not going to say anything bad about Hannah Einbinder doing nude scenes. We need more horny exhibitionists, even if she's kinda got that Nepo disposition that she doesn't care because it doesn't matter to her. Anyway, it's not a hard film to sit through, and is worth watching to talk about it, but I think it's ultimately empty. But that emptiness is not something I feel like a lot of people don't want to poke, and it drives me nuts because it's central to the whole thing.
[Side note: America has transitioned from being a voyeuristic nation to an exhibitionist one, and I truly miss that a lot of exhibitionist in the voyeur era knew that they were being watched, but the fact that they were okay with it was part of the turn on. Part of what made it titillating was the un-had conversation that both parties want this, whereas exhibitionism doesn't allow for the fun of being naughty in conversation with the other person. Rich kids get naked like it's laundry day. People who knew they were incredibly hot but didn't have generational wealth were revealing themselves. The class component magnifies the fact that rich people are less likely to sleep with you, so it ruins the fantasy. The idea of the girl or boy next door is ruined when the girl is Zoe Kravitz. Old Hollywood understood that Marlene Dietrich couldn't play a secretary. Now it doesn't even really know what to do with actors, and definitely doesn't know how to be horny. But not understanding that relatable hot and unrelatable hot are two very different things is part of Hollywood's problem.]
I won't waste too much time on a plot description, but: Einbinder is Kris, a director who's set to reboot a version of SKEEPAWAY CAMP that is also FRIDAY THE 13th, where someone who wears an air vent is the killer. It spawned a franchise that is set to be rebooted, and so it follows Kris as she tries to figure out how she can make it while meeting with the star of the first film, who slipped out of the public after release. The star is Gillian Anderson's Billy, doing a stoned version of a Tennessee Williams theatrical marm/Gloria Swanson SUNSET BOULEVARD type that still has sex appeal. The two spend time together and Kris reveals that she's obsessed with Billy's death scene where she seems to be communicating multiple feelings at once. Billy was having sex in the film and in real life for the first time but also is murdered in the film. And then there's the figure of Little Death (Jack Haven), who is a transgender killer, that Kris has a love hate relationship with, and eventually, to free herself, Kris must become both filmmaker and star of her own imaginary movie.
There are interesting things about this film. And I may yet read a review of this that makes me reconsider things and take the film seriously. But that's not modern criticism. Maybe a critic will write an appreciation about the film that makes me rethink what I'm about to say. But I would like to be honest, and my honesty will also allow for the fact that I could be dead wrong and that a second viewing or more might change my mind. But, with that said, allow me to talk about why I think this is a bad film.
There is a sequence in the middle of the movie that seems to be a recreation/restaging of a kill sequence in the middle of one of the fake slasher movies, but also something of a fever dream of shotgunning FRIDAY THE 13TH kill sequences where the whole thing is scored to a Counting Crowes song. It's kind of a oner (I'd have to watch it again to see for sure) where Little Death kills most people in the camp, scored to one of the worst songs of the nineties. It was the moment I had to say I thought the film was bad and pointless. It's because it's kind of doing a similar thing to SINNERS - though I can't say it was done on purpose to mimic it - where there's a oner that shows how a lot of America's greatest music comes through black artists, and that there is a throughline from Robert Johnson to Kendrick Lamar. The sequence in TEENAGE DEATH seems to exist to suggest that ironically liking something is the same thing as liking something. The problem is that director Jane Schoenbrun doesn't do a good job at explaining why liking trash isn't a bad thing. I didn't walk out of the film thinking the Counting Crowes were good. I don't think the film is making an argument that Counting Crowes are underrated or even that it's a good song, because the scene is so over the top that the joke may be that the dissonance is meant to be the punchline. I don't get from the film "you dummy, your expectations of a thing led you to dismiss great art" so much as "I like crap, get used to it."
And none of this would bother me if I could solely watch the film through the lens (that I have to approximate) as a trans appreciator. Wanting to be subject and object is fascinating, wanting to be both man and woman, killer and victim, penetrator and penetrated, wanting to transition is interesting. The problem I have and I can't get over is that almost every horror filmmaker for the last twenty to thirty years aren't very interesting for the exact same reasons I think this is bad.
I love John Carpenter. And one of the things I love about him is he made a lot of different types of films, even different types of horror films. I am less interested in horror movie filmmakers who want to make John Carpenter films. Much as I'm uninterested in horror directors who want to make Sam Raimi, George Romero, David Cronenberg or Wes Craven films. We live in karaoke times, and there's nothing interesting about karaoke artistically. There is an art to karaoke, but if you're locked in to one facet, you're not making art, you're doing pattern recognition.
I don't think it's wrong to want to make the next FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV that inspires people like you, I do think there's something wrong with trying to make FRIDAY THE 13TH PART IV again, and it's one of the biggest problems with horror right now. It's why WEAPONS was such a breath, it's why BACKROOMS and OBSESSION hit a nerve when a number of low budget horror films do not. I mean, both of those films may have grossed more than most Eli Roth movies combined. I know a lot of that culture and in some cases the actual filmmakers and I'm not saying they're wrong or bad, or whatever, and a lot of it is that studios don't often embrace more than sequels and reboots, but the fact that Roth made an AI-enhanced horror film or that Ti West made a movie with Johnny Depp after his XXX trilogy doesn't surprise me. No new car ideas. Horror fandom learned guitar but can only play other people's music. THANKSGIVING is maybe Eli Roth's best film and it's because it is basically a 1981 horror film simulacrum. I don't like selfish art that exists less for the audience and more for the director to pleasure themselves, and I don't like it regardless of who does it. Many of our most talented filmmakers may make films that are spank bank shit, but they also generally make it a movie for people to enjoy. A lot of modern stuff does not offer that courtesy.
And so watching a film where I had to say to myself "Look, this isn't for you, there isn't meant to be a 1:1 with anything SLEEPAWAY or FRIDAY" but when it basically turns the whole thing into a masturbatory fantasy, I had to check out.
And here's where I think the film is bad bad bad, slasher sequels are often are not about violence. They're about expectations. When you watch a slasher sequel, your expectations are for kills. And I get that, I can enjoy that. But Schoenbrun's whole approach from the violence of Little Death is that the violence isn't real. And it isn't. But that's such a disgusting place for any writer/director/whatever to approach horror. Yes, we accept that in sequels we are there for the thing, but that in itself is disgusting. If horror is based on purity tests it's conservative art. The ability to enjoy meaningless violence is a thing, but making violence so violent it isn't actually violent makes me sick to my stomach if that isn't the point. What I enjoy about films like STORY OF RIKI or DEATH WISH 3 is partly that they exist in their moment as a singular expression of ultra violence. They're stupid. Is this?
And what does it mean to get off to horror? Perhaps that is the interesting question. Often horror sequels present the villain as the actual hero, and often because the villain is othered it makes them sympathetic to a minority culture that may see them - if not in the right than - misunderstood. But that also requires an understanding of anti-heroes, and what that means, but it does not absolve or forgive them their transgressions.
Adrianne King is somewhat referenced here, and she left the industry because people wanted to rape and kill her. A number of horror actresses have told stories where the fandom was too weird. I don't get making this movie and not addressing that. Yes, it's a lot, but also, what are we doing here? By having violence mean nothing the teenage sex and death is basically redundant, because the death is the little death of orgasm, made clear by the killer's name. But if you're turned on by violent shit, and are ignoring the violence, then that raises questions the film can't answer, but suggests the filmmaker is a sociopath.
I'm not dismissing this film as a transgender piece of art, I'm dismissing it as a horror movie that seems to ignore that violence is real and that though while a character being stabbed is not real, that's not an interesting way to look at horror. Accepting the plasticine nature of horror sequels is something we do as a society when we recognize we enjoy violence and punishment as a side effect of these movies, the people who die are generally lame in ways the films communicate, they are sinners killed to appease an angry mob, where even modest transgressions mean a death sentence in films where violence is so gamified that we don't actually take it as real. I understand how this can be interesting - like I can enjoy the shit out of later FRIDAY sequels - but it's because we have accepted that these films are bad and are 88 minutes of sex and violence. If your main character wants to both direct and act in a film where they are murdered, it's not about violence. And ignoring the violence inherent in horror is such a post-modern, and ultimately terrible approach to cinema. What I hate about so much modern horror is that, and so this angle seems fresh but is also just as mastubatory as (so and so horror wunderkind who recycles their heroes like Adam Wingard, etc. USE A DIFFERNET FONT DUDE). Po-mo "I mean it but I don't" doesn't really interest me.
Look, Jane Schoenbrun said recently that one of her favorite filmmakers is Kevin Smith, and I think she's making a Kevin Smith film. Smith has revealed himself to be a good writer who isn't a good filmmaker. I like Jane Schoerbrun as a filmmaker for the most part, she seems to be after something, but if it's "I want to stew in the films I grew up with and not move on from the things that turned me on when I was a child," it is ultimately conservative art because it seems to lust for a past that no longer exists if it ever did. I'm not dismissive of this film because I think Jane Schoenbrun didn't make the movie she had to, I'm dismissive because I wouldn't trust her to make a movie with a larger budget because she seems just as likely to just recycle the same ideas about wanting to be a subject and object over and over, and it's not that interesting. Masturbation can be entertaining, but it isn't inherently interesting.
If I'm being honest, the reason I want to write this negative review is because I think Jane Schoenbrun could be a great filmmaker, and if she keeps making movies like this she will be a footnote. Because this isn't a good film. And if she doesn't get any negative pushback she will be as useless as a nepo baby. Treating minority filmmakers like special Olympic athletes causes its own stunting. And ultimately, that may be the only thing I'm critiquing. But at the end of the day, selling audiences on a transgender filmmaker who made a mid film is as dangerous as being negative toward them. If you encourage enough people watch mid trans art, they may dismiss it for being mid. No one is trying to get Matty Rich into the Criterion Collection. No one is trying to suggest BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE is a masterpiece. And there's also a liberal hustle in supporting minorities that often is just as bullshit. Someone sent me a link that Chloe Zhao comes from money, which is not something that most people want to think about. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Emerald Fennell comes from money, and seem to make part of their bones on being feminists or girl powered. If we're in a grifter nation, people selling themselves as a a representative of a minority are just as likely to be corrupt as their antithesis.
Schoenbrun made a stoner film, and I think it's meant to be taken that way. But stoners are generally dull, and don't think things through because their brains are being pickled. I think also part of it is that if you're going to do a live read of SECRETARY flipping sexes is kind of interesting (I WANT YOUR SEX kinda does that and it's awesome, please go see Araki's latest). But having it be both women is putting a hat on a hat, because part of what makes the film SECRETARY interesting is that it's about heterosexual weirdness. I'm not saying this as a negative against homosexual women, but lesbianism doesn't challenge the patriarchy. They actually like it, because they think it's a performance for them. At the end of the day watching hot women fuck each other is as much of interest to Donald Trump as it is to lesbians. Like nepo nudity, it's point of rebellion intersects with privilege to the point it's not longer actually rebellious. Like how younger people feel like smoking is a rebellion: It isn't. Yes, you're being transgressive, but to destroy yourself.
And I'm not saying this as a negative against the film (go watch it) or critics. It is a film to watch and talk about and that in itself is rare and interesting. But please dig in. Because a surface level acceptance will not hook audiences. I hated this movie, but not because I think people shouldn't experience it. The films that shouldn't be experienced present themselves as such. It's just, I don't think this is a film that inspires, I think it is very much a closed loop. I don't need Jane Shoerbrun, transexual artist, to make art for everyone. I just wish her whole thing wasn't "I want to be the art that fucks me." And it might be, but that isn't very interesting.
