Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

CinemaSerf

"Kris" (Hannah Einbinder) has managed to convince some investors to consider funding her attempt to resurrect a dated horror fanchise set at a remote holiday camp. To that end, she has tracked down the woman who was the original damsel in distress in the series's very first outing decades ago. "Billy" (Gillian Anderson) has been fairly reclusive ever since that first success, and has retreated to live at the very camp in which the films were based. Now in the depths of winter, "Kris" braves the snowy conditions to pay her a visit - and her arrival at the eerily silent camp sets in train quite an emotionally and psychologically charged few hours with her enigmatic hostess. I think my problem with this stemmed from the decision of auteur Jane Schoenbrun to put her own experiences front and centre here and rather leave the mysterious substance of the plot to play second fiddle to that. Clearly, this is a film-maker who has had their fair share of struggles to get her often quite eclectically structured (i.e. last year's "I Saw the TV Glow") films funded and made, and so coupled with a sexual fluidity that neither Einbinder nor the underused Anderson are afraid to commit to, this became more of a commentary of a character with whom I couldn't really engage set against an half-baked critique of the repetitious slasher-genre upon which this tries to make it's money. The threads do come together a little more completely towards the conclusion, but I think by exploiting so many of the clichés and photographic tecnhiques of films like "Halloween"; "Friday the 13th" or even the more recent "Black Phone" sequel, and presenting a paucity of meaningful dialogue, this sort of falls into it's own trap of introspective mediocrity rather than "elevating" itself from the more generic quag.