Review: A bravura slasher with heart and guts, 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' cuts deep

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Set us as preferred “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is a witty, gory slasher-romance that feels so personal to writer-director Jane Schoenbrun that they’ve essentially sliced out their soul and smeared it on the screen.“Hacks’” Hannah Einbinder plays a rising director named Kris, a Sundance darling and Schoenbrun avatar of sorts who wants to convince a long-forgotten scream queen named Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) to star in her next movie.It’s a resurrection of the fictitious “Camp Miasma” franchise, a hack-’em-up about hormonal camp counselors slaughtered by a gender-bending, spear-wielding killer called Little Death, who has an air-conditioning vent for a face.

(The reason why sort of makes sense when you see his lair.) Billy played the final girl in the 1983 original film, then disappeared.And so Kris heads out to Billy’s snowbound hideaway — which just so happens to be where the movie was shot.Young Billy (a riveting Amanda Fix) imprinted on Kris in a way she can’t articulate.

Smoking weed with the real woman will hopefully help.Anderson’s Billy steps out of the shadows with a full face of femme fatale makeup and a syrupy Dolly Parton drawl, promptly serving Kris enough fried chicken to feed a bobsled team.

Has Anderson ever had more fun onscreen? Her performance presents as camp, but her dynamic range of loud cackles and quiet glances is fabulous.Movies With ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,’ a new book and a branded soda, G Spot, the veteran actor is maxing her satisfaction on her own terms.Acting in a film within a film, Fix’s version of teenage Billy is so nervous it seems impossible she’ll become Anderson’s diva.

You can practically hear the girl’s heart beating so loud that it breaks your own.The two Billys almost snatch the movie from under its lead.

But t...