So, here’s the key if you are confused: Little Death or Le petite mort means orgasm. Just in case you didn’t know.

Kris is a young filmmaker who has been offered the ability to guide a legacy franchise (or a zombie franchise, as they refer to it in the movie), the titular Camp Miasma, to a new start. In order to get an idea what to do with this, she visits the actress who played the final girl of the movie that started the whole series who now lives an isolated life. Turns out that she bought the original camp and lives there, and also Kris off-handedly mentions that the movie was her “lesbian awakening”. The two of them grow closer as Kris learns about the weird secrets behind the movies.

Kris feels like she plays a role. She constantly brings up things that are problematic in the movies, and she’s polyamorous, even though she doesn’t seem to like the lifestyle, but she just feels like she’s the kind of woman who would be poly, so she identifies as one. At the same time, even though she likes to play the woke role, telling Billy, the actress, that the movie was her “lesbian awakening” feels like behavior you shouldn’t do that openly. (Although, as a nerd teen in the 90s, I get where she’s coming from as her opposite is played by Gillian Anderson.)

Billy, in her sixties and having stayed out of the limelight for decades at that point, is still obsessed with the movies, especially the killer, Little Death. She has her own cinema on the camp grounds, where she can rewatch her own movie at will. She is very theatrical, as if she wants to put on a performance to an audience she doesn’t usually have.

Most of the movie is just these two, except that at times we are watching the various movies from the franchise, mostly the first one, since that’s the one Billy was in before declining to appear in more movies.

The movies within movie are shot on film and are thus very recognizable. They are poor quality slashers, sometimes heightened to almost the point of satire, but not quite. They are deliberately bad and thus quite reminiscent of the TV series within a movie of I Saw the TV Glow. Little Death is also kind of a weird killer. He, Kris refers to Little Death as ‘he’ despite the origin story being about Little Death being bullied for being genderfluid (I guess, the story is that they basically change their gender every day).

It is also noteworthy, that in a true horror movie tradition, the two main characters have names that are usually male.

Part of the movie is about the misogyny of slashers, but women still being fascinated by them. Now, personally, I understand where the misogyny claims come from, but there are arguments to the opposite as well. Also, horror is such an absurd and inherently anti-establishment genre that we shouldn’t assume that their attitudes are taken seriously by the viewership (or the filmmakers). Here’s the thing: I have a lot of books on cinema. A quick check tells me that all the books about horror on my shelf have been written by women. And none of them are negative on the topic. Sure, they might point out problematic aspects in movies, but in general they seem to find horror cathartic in a way men don’t (or men don’t want to talk about or are incapable of doing so).

From that point of view, this movie is a continuation of a discussion about the role of horror movies in women’s lives. Clearly Shoenbrun (as the writer-director) has an interest in media and how it affects us.

I also appreciate Schoenbrun’s taste in music. She doesn’t care about anachronisms here either, just putting a track from mid-2000s into the movie within the movie that was shot in early 80s.

The movie probably needs more than one viewing to fully digest. Yet, it’s not really that complex. It is quite weird and full of surprises, though. While the movie takes very meta turns at times, you still don’t quite know where it’s going. It manages to maintain many of the tropes of the genre, but in ways that are definitely novel. Some of the self-referential stuff could be a bit cringe inducing, but they manage to avoid that by making it a joke (for example, instead of Scream, they somehow namedrop The New Nightmare as the example of a meta-movie by Wes Craven).

Is it worth your time? Yes. I didn’t like it quite as much as I Saw the TV Glow, but there’s room be worse than perfection. This is still a great movie. I wouldn’t go in looking for a slasher, but it has those elements as well. The kills are bloody, but not really inventive, so you won’t be getting that out of it. Of course, the kills can’t be inventive, since the fictional franchise is supposed to be the shitty forgettable one, even if Kris and Billy basically worship it.