When is a woke horror movie not quite as woke as we expect?

It starts with self-awareness.

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” wears its progressive heart on its bloody sleeve. Writer/director Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw the TV Glow”) explores LGBTQ+ themes from start to finish.

They’re integral to the story, but Schoenbrun understands both modern Hollywood mores and slasher film tropes.

What emerges is playful and fresh, but it’s still lacking a core element essential to the genre in play.

Scares.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”) gets tapped to direct a remake of “Camp Miasma,” a 1980s slasher film that fueled a long-running franchise. The “Friday the 13th” parallels are impossible to miss and the extensive attempts to display its pop culture legacy impress.

She travels to a secluded town to interview Billy (Gillian Anderson) before production can begin. The actress starred in the first film in the franchise, skipped the sequels and became a hermit of sorts.

Kris hopes to pick her brain while fleshing out her take on the material. The studio craves an “elevated” horror update, code for addressing the saga’s “problematic” elements.

Of course. 

For Kris, it’s a chance to meet a reclusive star and dig deeper into “Camp Miasma” lore. And boy, is that a rich fount of material, and that’s before Billy opens her creative soul to Kris.

What if the film’s signature stalker, Little Death (Jack Haven), wasn’t just fiction? And could Billy become not just a nostalgic cameo in the new film but its leading lady?

There’s plenty to unpack throughout “Camp Miasma,” from its stylish visuals to the way Schoenbrun insists even a cheesy slasher film has cultural heft. It’s the latter that stands out the most, apart from the creep factor powering our introduction to Billy’s lair.

It’s easy to dismiss a blood-and-guts slasher series as popcorn fluff, but some find meaning in Final Girls and signature kills. Consider the legion of horror fans who stuff conventions, flood Facebook and worship at the altar of their favorite Scream Queens.

“Camp Miasma” has your back.

Other elements of the movie aren’t as stable. The Kris-Billy connection doesn’t quite gel, despite strong performances from both actresses. 

Einbinder is terrific in a role that could have been one-note in lesser hands.

Every franchise has its skeletons.

CAMP MIASMA is now streaming exclusively on MUBI. https://t.co/yS6GoqsZt3

— Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (@CampMiasmaFilm) October 15, 2026

And while the film celebrates an iconic film franchise, scares are in short supply. Little Death has none of the macabre menace of a Jason, Freddy or Art the Clown.

The cartoonish kills don’t help.

Sexuality runs throughout the film, from Kris’ queer love life to Little Death’s origin story. That horror is a conduit for carnal appetites is convincingly sketched out, but it doesn’t give the film’s third act the narrative push we need.

Instead, a calculated chaos descends on the story, failing to build on the intriguing story threads.

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” teases a profound take on horror, sex and the ties that bind the two. What emerges is a mash note to ’80s horror and the freeing nature of its sexual impulses.

HiT or Miss: 3 out of 5 stars
Genre: Horror/Meta satire 
Runtime: 1 hour, 52 minutes
Where to Watch: MUBI
Family Friendly? R (Sexual situations, adult language, gore, blood and mature themes)

The post ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ – It’s Woke, But … appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

As if to echo political scientists warning Democrats not to read too much into Trump's election-day wipeout, the Washington Post considers a couple of nasty themes that always come up when Democrats win nationally: taxing "the rich" and preventing "the rich" from spending their own money in elections.

(See also: "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business" by Ayn Rand, which, alas, continues to age like fine wine.)

The editorial's point of departure is California, where dueling ballot measures are polling in exactly the opposite way one might expect from the Republicans' drubbing last week:

And it still does not appear to have been enough to get California voters to approve a wealth tax. Proposition 40 is losing by about 10 points, with nearly two-thirds of the vote counted as of Friday. Proposition 42, a competing ballot measure that would prohibit new state wealth taxes and retroactive taxes, is on track to pass.

That is excellent news, and the piece analyzes both how hard it would be to make this folly federal law, as well as how bad it would be for American innovation.

But that's not all! as the infomercials always say. The piece also notes that the last Tuesday has provided an undeniable counterexample to the notion that "the rich" can buy elections, and so must therefore be prevented from spending their own money in the exercise of their inalienable right to freedom of speech:

When voters started to understand these realities, and the polling turned against the measure, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) cried foul, criticizing billionaires' spending for tainting the results. Did he really expect them to do nothing while he bragged about taking 5 percent of everything they own?

It isn't as though spending determines election results, as Tuesday's elections elsewhere proved. Elon Musk, the world's richest man on paper, spent more than anyone ever has in a single election cycle, backing Republicans who got slaughtered. If California voters were bothered by billionaires' activism, they could have told them to take a hike, just like Texas voters did to Musk.

Hats off to the editorial board of the Washington Post. While I wouldn't bet on Democrats heeding their wise words, it is good to hear them coming from somewhere.

An argument I saw, but can't place, noted that many of the new Democrats in Congress are moderates, meaning that the Dem-Socialists won't enjoy their recent outsized power as crucial members of a very thin majority. I wouldn't put the odds of a sane Democrat majority as very high, but perhaps they are nonzero.

That's certainly better than zero, particularly since it remains possible that the brain-dead ignoramuses of MAGA could continue controlling the GOP, despite this obvious-but-to them repudiation.

-- CAV

Democrats have run against tariffs in the past and then kept them in place once in power. Repeating this would be a mistake, especially when voters have made their preferences well-known.

President Trump’s approval rating on immigration has plummeted in large part because so many Americans reject his enforcement efforts in the interior.

"People are celebrating Trump’s midterm defeat without realising that he has already accomplished his mission.

"Trump helped transform the Republican Party into one guided more by faith, emotions, and personal loyalty than by facts, logic, and reasoned debate.

"Much of the Democratic Party had already abandoned rationality. Trump helped bring the Republican Party down the same path. And he succeeded.

"How can things improve when irrationality has become mainstream on both sides?

"Perhaps the silent majority is more rational than the loudest voices. But I see little evidence of it."

~ Thinking Matters