Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Camp Miasma is a long-running slasher franchise that originated in the 1980s. Its recurring villain is “Little Death”, the ghost of a child who was purportedly raised as both a boy and girl by their parents. After being drowned by hateful campers, Little Death periodically rises from the lake that borders Camp Miasma and uses a spear to slaughter everyone he finds. Though the series’ earlier installments were successful, a spate of low-quality, unprofitable sequels has left it in limbo.

Queer filmmaker Kris Williams is hired to direct a reboot of Camp Miasma. Though she knows she has been selected to make the franchise’s transphobic premise more palatable to a modern audience, Kris feels genuine attachment to the series, owing to her childhood experiences watching it. She is particularly interested in casting Billy Presley, an actress who abruptly retired after playing the original film’s final girl. She travels to the Pacific Northwest to meet with Billy, who, she discovers, lives on the abandoned campgrounds used to film the series. Billy is warm, perceptive, and obsessed with Little Death. Kris quickly opens up to her, discussing her dissatisfaction in her polyamorous relationship. Billy dismisses Kris’ overly academic interpretation of the series, but expresses interest in acting again. To her agent’s chagrin, Kris becomes convinced that the reboot should star Billy in her original role.

Kris and Billy watch the original Camp Miasma together. Kris knows the film by heart and points out lines and filming techniques while watching, though Billy appears uncomfortable. Kris is especially fond of an image in a sex scene featuring Billy, but the campgrounds’ power goes out just as the shot appears on screen. Kris and Billy return to Billy’s house, where Kris initiates sex with Billy before abruptly stopping and lamenting that sex has always been difficult for her to enjoy. Billy explains that she was sexually assaulted during the filming of the Camp Miasma sex scene, during which she learned to orgasm and enjoy sex by imagining Little Death watching her have sex, before killing her. Kris admits that she can only enjoy sex if she fantasizes herself as a sexualized final girl. Billy encourages her to explore her fantasies and offers to “make a movie” with Kris.

The next morning, Kris has a pitch meeting with the studio executives. Instead of pitching a movie, she explains that Little Death actually resides under the lake and imagines the world through the Camp Miasma films, and everyone, including Kris, are characters in one of their films. She then returns to the camp, where it is suddenly summer and Little Death has begun another killing spree. Billy encourages Kris to assume the role of the final girl. She is chased by Little Death and watches him kill her partner, agent, and superiors. Finally, Kris is chased to a cabin where Billy awaits. As the two have sex, Little Death approaches them; Kris initially pleads for her life before accepting her fate, appearing to have an orgasm as Little Death spears her and Billy simultaneously. In Little Death’s lair under the lake, a VHS copy of a new film called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma appears.

The following morning, Kris and Billy revive. Still covered in blood, they leave the campgrounds, travel past the carnage left by Little Death, and return to the gas station where the original Camp Miasma began. After buying snacks, Kris repeats the lines spoken by a final girl in an earlier Camp Miasma film, claiming that she can still feel Little Death’s presence at the bottom of the lake, where he is waiting to come for them once more. She and Billy smile at one another, before walking off hand in hand.