CANNES, France, May 13 (Reuters) – U.S. filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun’s new horror film, “Teenage Death and Sex at Camp Miasma”, was borne of a desire to remake a genre beloved by many despite its troubling aspects, the director told Reuters before its Cannes Film Festival premiere on Wednesday.
Some horror films, including the slasher subgenre popularised by “Halloween”, have been criticised as transphobic because they equate gender nonconformity with mental illness or danger, and use it as a source of shock or fear.
Examples include the characters Norman Bates in “Psycho” or Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs.”
“I grew up in love with those films, and I don’t think I’m the only trans person who found themselves oddly comforted by these depictions of the transsexual monster, even while those depictions are obviously very troubling,” Schoenbrun said.
“(They) also instilled in me a deep internalized transphobia that a huge part of early transition involved getting over,” added the director.
THE WORLD OF CAMP MIASMA
“Teenage Sex and Death,” Schoenbrun’s third feature, was selected to open the festival’s second-tier Un Certain Regard category.
Hannah Einbinder, from TV series “Hacks”, stars as a screenwriter who visits the mysterious “final girl” actor from the first film in the fictional “Camp Miasma” slasher franchise, played by Gillian Anderson, to bring her on to a new reboot.
Their relationship quickly deepens into an exploration of sex and body image as they sense that the “Camp Miasma” killer, Little Death, has started to awaken again at the bottom of the campside lake, in a blending of reality and fiction.
Einbinder said she related to the film’s themes of liberation from shame and embracing desire, and how difficult it can be to feel out of place in one’s own body, especially in sexual situations.
“I think everybody experiences that, and it’s really not often talked about, especially in the context of a sapphic relationship,” she said.
(Reporting by Miranda MurrayEditing by Gareth Jones)
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