Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

I really consider Jane to be a visionary, one that shares certain sensibilities with my generation; their horror seems influenced by a specific type of media literacy that comes from early internet exposure and a wide, strange breadth of reference / understanding of cultural residue.

Miasma was a much more cathartic film than TV Glow which I wasn't totally expecting. It builds upon the nesting-doll framing of that film, but uses the idea of a meta-narrative to represent, or rather become, the gaze of the other in a story about sexual awakening. Ok, the term hurts to type, but it really is a "love letter to film" in a very literal romantic sense, directly connecting the pathway of film as a conduit of seeing uncanny/grotesque imagery as a youth to becoming the mediating fantasy of sexual fulfillment.

There is a whirlwind of mixed-media and artifice used to construct the campgrounds but I think it all somehow all comes together into a very romantic, intimate setting. I thought the best moments of the film leaned into this insular atmosphere and were the gentlest ones; the campier horror elements not freaky enough to balance the tone for me. Despite not being as moved or unnerved by it as TV Glow or World's Fair, I think there's a ton of beauty in the understanding this film expresses.