If It Gets Too Real, You Can Always Turn It Off

 Film Watched: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

October 9th, 2026

I have been watching movies a long time. I first got into actually understanding films when I discovered David Lynch films in high school, and I never really looked back. The two films that undeniably helped make me who I am are Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, both of which still are my favorite movie depending on the day.

Lynch is very important to what I am going to be discussing here today, which is mainly that I am ready to call it: Jane Schoenbrun is the heir apparent to David Lynch. But I have to talk more about Lynch before I can get there, so bear with me.

Recently, when interrogating just why Lynch is so important to me, I realized that all my favorite filmmakers (Lynch, Bergman, Haneke, Kubrick, etc) are always communicating personally through the medium of film. In particular, I came to realize that (even if he didn't intend it to be so) The Elephant Man is a personal statement from Lynch about Eraserhead and the way it was seen. In Eraserhead, Lynch made a film that allowed him to be vulnerable and express his deep-seated fears about becoming a husband and a father, that it would not only end his own hopes and dreams, but that he would also destroy his wife and child in the process. 

So imagine you make art so you can express your anxieties and vulnerabilities, and the film becomes a midnight movie cult success that people smoke dope and go to watch the film because it is "weird." While the imagery connected to the audience, as a collective whole they missed the part that Lynch saw as the most important aspect. 

In essence, Eraserhead was seen as a freak show.

In Elephant Man, a sensitive and emotional man is raised up out of poverty and mediocrity for all the wrong reasons, gains celebrity for all the wrong reasons and, while he is largely treated well by the social elites, he is still seen as nothing more than a freak. So he decides to live his life the way he wants, even if it kills him (and it does, in the films sublime final moments, where John Merrick lays himself down to sleep as a man, even though he will suffocate due to his condition). That sounds a lot like Lynch, disappointed that his meaningful expression of his soul was seen as a curiosity, making a personal statement that he will do his own thing, that he will make the films he wants to make, even if his career dies as a result.

Lynch does go on to do Dune, and he hates the gig, and it shows, and he more or less entirely swears off the studio system, seeking independent financing for his future work (Twin Peaks, of course, is something of an exception).

So, when thinking about all this, I realized two things are true:

1.All film is adaptation 

2.How the idea is adapted says something about the film maker

An idea is filtered from brain, to page, to screen, always changing form, always adapting to fit the needs of the medium it enters. Some filmmakers do this through careful technique, to show you what is being said (nothing wrong with this, by the way. There are excellent filmmakers who show you unbelievable things, even if there is a distance. Sometimes a painting needs only to be pretty). Others, like Lynch, want you to feel it, to communicate deeper ideas about the way they see the world, the way they feel about things. They show you what's inside of them, strip themselves bare, eviscerate themselves in front of you, all for the desire to be truly seen and, ideally, to share those feelings with others.

In essence, put less pretentiously, film is art, and a filmmaker is an artist.

The other main preamble here is that, when recording the latest episode of my podcast At The Devil's Ball, my co-host Sammaeal referred to Jane Schoenbrun as "his most anticipated filmmaker" despite their only have completed three feature films. After that conversation, I watched Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Schoenbrun's latest film, and came to understand why Sammaeal (and myself) might think that way.

It's because we don't see the personal film as often anymore.

I've talked a lot on the podcast, and privately, about how a lot of modern cinema doesn't do much for me. In the sea of Marvel movies and retro IPs and remakes and adaptations, there isn't a lot of personal expression to be found. That, again, isn't to say there aren't good movies being made, there definitely are, but we haven't seen something like Eraserhead until...well, probably I Saw The Tv Glow, Schoenbrun's other masterpiece about making peace with one's own identity (gendered or otherwise: the films power lies in allowing the cis viewer to relate to the trans experience by allowing it to a broader concept without ignoring the allegories, a rare feat) through the shared experience of narrative art (which was deliberately meant to invoke Buffy and Power Rangers, two shows that undoubtedly left an impact on Schoenbrun as a young person). Glow was a tremendous experience as well, and I kinda want to rewatch it now, and probably will soon. 

I'm not really here to review Miasma.

Not really.

To really talk too in detail about the film would rob you, the reader, of the experience of the film, but I can talk to you a little about how it made me feel, the joys and sads and horrors that all came to the surface, with the understanding that, if you meet the film on it's wavelength, you will likely have similar feelings, but about different things.

The film is about a lot of things, a lot of feelings are being expressed, but the one that might be most relevant to what I was talking about with Lynch was probably it's most simplistic: Schoenbrun makes a pledge to keep doing what they're doing. 

The films main character, Kris (Hannah Einbinder, in a wonderfully vulnerable performance), is a director who made a splash at film festivals with a pretentious art film, and has been hired to reboot a popular slasher franchise (patently based on Friday The 13th, with nods to Sleepaway Camp) that has run out of steam. She complains that she realizes she was only hired to do the job because she is queer, and that her queerness will help the studio gloss over the franchise's problematic past and, through her relationship with Billy (Gillian Anderson, channeling Bette Davis and giving an incredible performance), begins to realize that, well, it just ain't worth it. Film is personal expression, after all, and what is inside her is certainly not a mainstream, big budget, studio driven IP piece, and the franchise meant a lot more to her (and Billy) than just the sum of it's parts. 

In doing the film, Schoenbrun makes a personal statement that her career path does not involve Marvel movies, or doing a Friday The 13th reboot, but continuing to make personal statements about the human condition (in all it's forms) through their shared love of genre fiction. Because, in the end, Schoenbrun knows just as Kris does (and Lynch somewhat learned): if the studio gave them a big job, it wouldn't be because they understood the films, but because they wanted a trans filmmaker for political points in an increasingly volatile world.

Of course, that isn't the only personal statement being made: the film is, at it's heart, a love story between an awkward, sexually confused queer filmmaker and the mommy domme former starlet, who develop a deep connection through their mutual understanding of a cult horror film. Not that they are the only ones who understand it, but that they understand it the same way, with the same spirit. 

It is unbelievably romantic and sweet and, yes, sexy.

What moved me the most was unusual though: Kris confesses, in a moment of vulnerability, that she has never had a successful encounter when it comes to intercourse. She views sex as something she does to meet her partners needs, and can only achieve orgasm by going "far away" and, chat...that's me. I didn't see it coming. And it gets weirder: her connection to cinema is that "far away." As such, the film becomes about Kris connecting cinema to the sexual being she has inside of her, with Billy gently guiding her, and it becomes a whole examination of the way film intersects with self, not only for the artist, but for the viewer. Film itself becomes an extension of reality, allowing us our "own private alternate universe," and if it gets too real, you can always turn it off. As Billy says, "It's all just for play."

I think I cried a little, four times.

What results is certainly chaotic, but the high energy tone, the sense of tension in mundane moments, the matte paintings and animations in the background, everything becomes an absolutely treat for the senses. 

And it is undeniably personal.

But if it gets too real, you can always turn if off.

Not only is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma my current favorite film of 2026 (and I'm working on seeing a lot more of those as we speak), but a new all-time favorite and, just like Sammaeal, Jane Schoenbrun is my most anticipated filmmaker today.

................

Anyway, going to try to write about movies again more often, hopefully regularly, and the ole' Cinematic Russian Roulette blog I made and abandoned years ago seems like the place to keep a film diary.