‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’: Little Death’s Bloody One-Take

When “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” director Jane Schoenbrun described their vision for the bloody one-take sequence in which Little Death (Jack Haven) massacres an entire summer camp — all set to Counting Crows’ 1996 rock ballad “A Long December” — they said it should feel like a Michael Bay movie.

“That’s the one part of the movie where it doesn’t have a filthy old print look to it,” cinematographer Eric Yue tells Variety. “It should feel cool and not in another era’s language, so we built upon that.”

In “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” a young queer filmmaker (Hannah Einbinder) travels to the cabin of a reclusive movie star (Gillian Anderson) in order to convince her to revitalize her career with a remake of “Camp Miasma,” which, in the world of the film, is its own “Friday the 13th”-style slasher franchise.

The bloody-as-hell sequence comes about halfway through the film, upending everything we’ve seen before. It features a series of hidden cuts and merges three locations together from the camp shoreline to the counselor’s lounge. Everything was carefully timed and choreographed to “A Long December,” including Little Death stabbing people every time the lyrics landed on the word “Hollywood.”

Since Schoenbrun was able to secure the rights to the song early in production, the crew had a significant amount of time to coordinate the film’s most ambitious sequence. Using an iPhone Steadicam to practice, the crew marked out where each of the beats needed to happen in the space.

“Jane is definitely a master of pop culture recontextualizations and cool, jarring combinations with a very deep-cut cinephile thing,” editor Graham Mason says.

Yue, who previously worked on “I Saw the TV Glow,” collaborated closely with Schoenbrun to storyboard the sequence for over 100 hours. While much of it was done practically, the sequence also required heavy VFX from the North Vancouver-based agency Niche — specifically to enhance the blood and exploding bodies.

“Jane would describe it as a Zack Snyder ‘300’ kind of blood,” Yue says. “The blood was meant to feel playful. It wasn’t something that makes you gag like, ‘Oh, this is too realistic.’ Every component of this was fun, including the snow, which isn’t necessarily realistic. Everything is heightened.”

The only 16mm shot of the film is of Billy (Anderson) looking directly at the camera before the film flares out and switches to the Little Death oner. The crew rented a Bolex camera to get this added “lift” right before the big sequence, Yue explains. “We almost feel like something has been reversed.”

Heavy stuntwork was required on Haven’s part; they had to wear a heavy rig with a smaller 35mm camera attached while doing the dance. “So every single time we did a take, we’d have to reload, and that was physically taxing on Jack,” Yue says, explaining that it took around seven or eight takes to nail the ballet-like sequence.

Haven, who also starred in “I Saw the TV Glow,” says that Schoenbrun “knew” Little Death lived inside them.

“They knew that I could represent this very specific experience of a character, which is someone who lives outside of the human but is this pure expression,” Haven says. “Jane knows that I am really transformative as a performer and I can change my body to a character. We say that I’m a creature that they can morph.”

The dance was choreographed by stunt coordinator Maja Aro. “The stunt performers were throwing themselves against the wall when the camera would turn, dropping to the ground. So it’s this very tightly choreographed ballet,” Haven says.

“And then Jane worked in the moment [at the end] where we see Little Death’s eyes and some sexy little rubbing blood on the face,” Haven adds. “My god, that’s his favorite thing!”

In addition to practicing at home with a spear to get the slasher movements just right, Haven would also send Schoenbrun videos with different Little Death walk options. “As a person, I’m kind of small, so it needed to be something sort of intimidating. It ended up being a Michael Myers and ‘Terminator’ cross of stillness with an immovable force. So I had that vocabulary going into it,” Haven says.

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” as a film, interrogates the legacy of the “Camp Miasma” slasher universe and how it resonates for queer viewers, mainly Kris (Einbinder). The Little Death sequence is particularly notable, then, because it suddenly forces the viewer to grapple with the perspective of the franchise villain.

Yue explains: “That is a concrete example where we watch Little Death, we kind of go into his helmet, now we’re becoming the POV of Little Death and then we come out of the body and watch. At the end, we almost feel like the camera is getting stabbed in some way.”

He commends Haven’s performance, adding: “During so much of the film, Jack’s wearing their helmet and we can’t see their face. But the physicality they bring to it is so unique.”

Thematically, the sequence is also about identifying with The Other, which is reinforced through the way the perspective evolves. “There is a component where we also feel and empathize with Little Death in a way. Sometimes the killer in these horror films, we actually don’t understand their perspective,” Yue says. “There’s this catharsis here.”

Another scene in the film with a distinctly Schoenbrun touch is the opening title sequence, set to an R.E.M. cover of “Night Swimming.” It lays out the entire “Camp Miasma” lore without a single line of expositional dialogue — from newspaper clippings, VHS tapes, DVDs to merch. And it was filmed on the last day of production.

Like the Little Death oner, it required extensive cooperation with Schoenbrun’s closest collaborators.

Mason recalls that from the very beginning, Schoenbrun’s script read: “This movie will have an awesome opening title sequence!”

“It tells the rise and fall of this horror movie franchise through all this ephemera,” Mason says. “It’s ambitious and asks a lot of the viewer right off the bat. It’s sort of saying, ‘Pay closer attention. This movie will reward your attentiveness.’”

When testing the film, Mason and Schoenbrun realized they could plant some extra exposition. “Like describing Kris as a Sundance wonderkid and showing a fake TMZ article that’s saying, ‘Billy is horror’s great recluse,’” Mason says.

The opening title sequence, of course, is filled with plenty of Easter eggs over the course of the 45-year-old franchise, from the director listed as the original “Camp Miasma” director, to a board game that’s actually playable, to hidden glimpses of Little Death’s costume in the arcade game. Additionally, all the articles written about the old “Camp Miasma” films were fully fleshed-out, canonically accurate pieces.

Mason says that Schoenbrun approached “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” as if they were just making a movie with some friends before bouncing those ideas off against the bigger resources of VFX and craftspeople.

He says of both Little Death’s dance and the opening title sequence: “Jane wanted the film to have this handmade, DIY, almost outsider art quality.”

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is currently playing in select theaters from Mubi.