This gory, sexy horror movie could finally win Gillian Anderson an Oscar

"Gillian Anderson has never really been a movie star. Instead she belongs to the pantheon of greats best seen in the boxes in our living rooms - think the Jon Hamms or the Sarah Lanchashires, people we don't tend to like in 90-minute chunks, but rather in weekly installments, delivered annually, sometimes with ad breaks. The cynical professionalism of The X Files' Dana Scully led to the pansexual cool of The Fall's Stella Gibson, which led to the deadpan comedy of Sex Education's Jean Milburn and the campy severity of The Crown's Margaret Thatcher."

"Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma casts Anderson as a vanished movie star, who played the scream queen of a Friday the 13th-style Eighties slasher film called Camp Miasma, then seemed to fall off the face of the planet. A young, queer filmmaker named Kris (played by a sharp and empathetic Hannah Einbinder, of the TV comedy Hacks) is determined to woo her back to acting, having been hired to write and direct a "woke" reboot of the original movie."

"She finds Anderson's Billy Russell living alone and spooky out in the woods where her movie was shot, dressed in Norma Desmond turbans and speaking in riddles. While they eat candy and trade psychosexual messiness, the killer from Camp Miasma - their gender all over the place and their head encased in an enormous ceiling fan - threatens to surface from the lake outside Billy's home."

"It's a lot! But also eerie, romantic and funny, the singular filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (of 2024's brilliant trans"

Gillian Anderson is portrayed as a performer whose strengths fit long-running television roles rather than brief movie stardom. She becomes a Cannes Film Festival darling in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, playing Billy Russell, a scream queen from an Eighties slasher film called Camp Miasma. After her fame fades, a young queer filmmaker, Kris, seeks her out to write and direct a “woke” reboot. Kris finds Billy living alone in the woods, dressed like Norma Desmond and speaking in riddles. Their candy-fueled, psychosexual conversations unfold as the Camp Miasma killer threatens to emerge from a lake nearby.

Read at The Independent