"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" - Under the Crystal Lake

Queer filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is elated to be making a reboot in the "Camp Miasma" slasher franchise, a vastly overexposed slasher series focusing on the murderous "Little Death", in part because it acted as her queer awakening but mostly because she is a huge fan of the films. Her idea is to recruit the reclusive star of the first film, Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), for a metatextual take. Kris finds herself drawn to the mysterious belle, and a chance to discuss art with her hero, and what it means to her: but Billy has some strange ideas of her own...

(Credit: Volksrant)
I am unfamiliar with Jane Schoenbrun.
They are a name I have heard floated as an auteur in recent years, largely off the back of acclaim for their trans-experience surreal horror movie "I Saw the TV Glow" (which I have not watched, despite an appearance from Fred Durst), but their 3rd film was off to an incredibly strong start for me. It opens on an extremely funny, glowing bloody murder from one of the "Camp Miasma" movies within a movie, before transitioning (hah) to a spectacularly cosy sequence of opening credits telling the history of the franchise in videotapes, merchandise and newspaper reviews very much in the vein of "Friday the 13th". From there it's odd, languid, mad, weirdly restrained, genre hopping, frustrating, a love story, an ode to horror, too smug for its own good, an anthem to art we love despite its problems, a discussion of art, a kind of preachy and extremely Marmite rant about seeing the forest for the trees in art, colourful, a showcase for the fucking treasure that is Gillian Anderson, a celebration of queer artists, an adoration of the slasher, a scattershot outpouring of colour, simultaneously very fun and not as fun as it should be, more of comedy than a horror, an allegory for sex in the right body after transitioning, odd, quirky, strange, bamboozling, inscrutable, surreal, and tailor made for a specific audience.
Much like "Mulholland Drive" or "Annette" or "Mortal Kombat 2": whatever my thoughts are on this piece of art do not matter, because there is not another piece of art like it.
It's an odd, strange duck I both liked and was thrown by. It's not for me in many angles, but things in it truly clicked. Parts felt smug or clunky, others hilarious and insightful.
It's a piece of art wherein the maker has a clear idea of what they want to do, and have painted the tapestry of this moment in time with their soul, their yearning, their ideas and their beauty, fuck what you think.
I am familiar with Jane Schoenbrun.