Review: 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' analyzes the sexual tension of horror movies, then dives into that fear and desire with gusto

Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun starts “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” as a scholarly dissertation on the cultural power of the American slasher film — and that’s not nearly as dry as you might think. But when Schoenbrun shifts from discussing horror movies to diving headlong into one, the excitement and sexual tension become deliciously unbearable.

Schoenbrun’s introduction informs viewers of the existence of one of the longest running horror franchises Hollywood ever made: The “Camp Miasma” series. It began as a typical story of horny teenagers at a sleepaway camp, getting messily cut to ribbons by a mysterious killer called Little Death, identified by a headpiece that resembles the square vent of a swamp cooler. The series produced more than a dozen sequels, each one worse than the last, until the franchise became a gruesome and problematic shadow of its former self.

Young filmmaker Kris Williams (played by Hannah Einbinder) sees it differently. Kris, identified in a trade paper as a “Sundance wunderkind,” is obsessed with the “Camp Miasma” films, and has been picked to resurrect the franchise. She calls it “zombie I.P.,” a piece of the studio’s intellectual property that’s a known name, but so blisteringly transphobic that the only way the suits can save it is to hire a queer filmmaker like Kris.

Before making her pitch to the studio, Kris ventures to the snowy Pacific Northwest to convince someone else: Billy Presley, the actress who played the “final girl” in the first “Camp Miasma” movie, and never acted again. Billy (played by Gillian Anderson) now lives in the old campsite where the first movie was filmed, and  Kris wonders if Billy has become a Norma Desmond, living in the dream world of her movie. Billy tells Kris that she lives at the camp because “someone’s got to be here when Little Death comes back.” When Kris declares that Little Death isn’t real, Billy replies, “Well, not with that attitude, he isn’t.”

Kris has told her agent (Sarah Sherman) that she wants Billy to star in her new “Camp Miasma” movie, not just appear in a fan-service cameo. Billy screens her personal copy of the first “Camp Miasma” for Kris (in which Schoenbrun lovingly copies the low-res style of the genre), and the young filmmaker starts revealing even deeper feelings. 

It’s here that Schoenbrun, who explored similar themes of onscreen sexuality in her 2024 psychological thriller “I Saw the TV Glow,” shifts from mirroring the mechanics of slasher movies and gets to her real game — exploring the combustible mix of fear and desire that feeds the horror genre. It’s something Kris (and, one assumes, Schoenbrun) has thought about since childhood, staying up late in the dark watching movies that evoked feelings they weren’t old enough to process.

As the movie goes on, Schoenbrun bends the narrative, with twisty imagery that David Lynch and David Cronenberg would have recognized as resembling their own. Schoenbrun doesn’t shy away from scenarios where revulsion, horniness and gallows humor bleed (no pun intended) into one, reveling in the odd irony that movies about a camp are loaded with campiness.

Einbinder, as anyone who’s seen her work in “Hacks” already knows, gives a spectacular performance here, holding in the young filmmaker’s roiling emotions until she can’t any more. Anderson has seldom been given a role this juicy, and she shatters all expectations of a horror movie star. And let’s give a special shout-out to the actor playing Little Death, Jack Haven (who starred in “I Saw the TV Glow”), who gives the character what few slasher villains have ever shown: Humanity and vulnerability.

By the final reel, and the reveal of the movie’s true “final girl,” audiences may be torn about “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.” Does it fulfill its promise of reimagining the horror thriller? Does it bring a jagged energy to some well-worn movie tropes? Does it suggest the most passionate love affair ever subjected to buckets of blood? I believe the answer to all three questions is “yes,” so I suggest you pack a bag and get to camp immediately.

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‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at several theaters. Rated R for bloody violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and some language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'Tony' delivers a portrait of a young man as an arrogant jerk, and Dominic Sessa and Antonio Banderas make it delicious

The celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain was the subject of a lot of mythologizing over his life, some of it self-imposed in his memoir “Kitchen Confidential” and other writings and CNN shows — so it’s no surprise that, eight years after his death, there’s a movie, “Tony,” that tries to do the same.

What makes “Tony” so powerful and downright entertaining is that it captures the chef at the very beginning of his journey, when he found the passion and developed the talent that could match his swagger.

The movie is set in the summer of 1975, when Bourdain was 19 and the idea of preparing great food wasn’t on his mind. Tony (played by Dominic Sessa) had designs on being a writer, and often told professors and girls he wanted to make out with that he was a writer — though he could produce scant evidence yet that he had actually written anything. (Notably, Tony’s last name is not uttered in the film until nearly the end.)

As a student at Vassar College, north of New York City, he applies for a prestigious fellowship and tells his parents it’s practically in the bag. So when he doesn’t get it, he lies and says he did, and then gets out of New York, claiming he’s on a research trip for his proposed novel. Really, he’s heading north to Provincetown, Rhode Island, a summer resort town, to chase after a young woman he fancies, Nancy Putkoski (played by Emilia Jones, in a somewhat fictionalized version of Bourdain’s first wife). 

Tony’s hopes of wooing Nancy hit reality on his first day in Provincetown, which ends with him getting drunk and tossed out of a seafood restaurant, and his cash stolen from his wallet. He wakes up in a hammock on the porch of the chef (Antonio Banderas) who runs the restaurant that ejected him. After a time, the chef (who is not identified until the very end of the movie) and the hotheaded Tony reach an understanding: He can keep sleeping on the hammock if Tony comes and works as a dishwasher at the restaurant.

Tony’s first day is tumultuous, as he burns his hand on a hot pan and is befriended by one of the sous chefs, Sal (Leo Woodall), who introduces Tony to the party-hard life of Provincetown’s summer tourists. Sal also introduces Tony to cocaine, which he takes to immediately, and heroin, which Bourdain wrote he didn’t start using until years later.

Slowly, though, Tony learns that his boss isn’t a typical seaside diner cook, but a classically trained chef with his own dog-eared copy of Auguste Escoffier’s legendary cookbook. Through his boss, Tony learns to appreciate great cooking and the camaraderie of a kitchen staff who can do it. 

Director Matt Johnson (“BlackBerry,” “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie”) and his three co-screenwriters work within the familiar confines of a “portrait of the artist as a young jerk” biopic. Moments of Tony’s arrogance run hard into moments of humiliation, and one of his big triumphs leads directly into a major disaster — which then leads into an even bigger and more redemptive triumph. 

As any chef knows, though, it’s not just the recipe, it’s the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the people preparing it that counts. The ensemble cast is strong, and brilliantly led by Sessa as the headstrong Tony and Banderas as the weathered chef who sparks his protege’s fire. And Johnson deftly captures Bourdain’s contradictory impulses — overconfidence and self-loathing — and shows how the tension between them made Bourdain, even at 19, the person we all recognize.

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‘Tony’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at several theaters. Rated R for pervasive language, drug use, and sexual content/nudity. Running time: 106 minutes.

Review: 'Union County' puts Will Poulter and a cast of nonprofessional actors through an authentic and honest look at recovery from addiction

Most movies about recovery from addiction fall into familiar plot patterns of struggle, relapse and redemption — but what makes writer-director Adam Meeks’ drama “Union County” one of the better examples of this genre is how he digs into the true-life details of such battles.

Will Poulter (“Death of a Unicorn”) plays Cody Parsons, recently out of jail and returned to his Ohio home town, where he’s enrolled in a county-mandated drug court program. He’s required to show up at court every day, keep a daily log of his activities, and take regular drug tests. On his first day, he runs into his foster brother, Jack (Noah Centineo), who’s also in the program.

Getting Cody and Jack back together isn’t the best thing for either man’s recovery efforts. We see them drive up to a house, buy some drugs, and shoot up in Cody’s car. They immediately crash the car, and Cody stumbles into the house where their sister, Kat (Emily Meade), lives with her little girl. The next morning, after finding Cody asleep on her couch, Kat calls the cops.

If there’s a silver lining in this moment, it’s that the judge decided Jack should be sent to a more restrictive rehab program in a nearby town — which opens up a space for Cody, who had been living out his car, to stay in the town’s sober living center. 

Meeks roots the story in the reality of addiction treatment in Bellefontaine, Ohio, about 30 minutes from the filmmaker’s home town of Columbus. The judge and the county clerk who oversee the drug court program, as well as several of its participants, portray themselves, depicting how opioid addiction has devastated this small town and many others like it. 

Poulter gives a grounded and understated performance that shows how hard and how mundane the day-to-day struggle to stay clean can be. Poulter’s portrayal of Cody’s addiction battle feels almost as real as the ones of his nonprofessional castmates.

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‘Union County’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 21, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for drug use and language. Running time: 97 minutes.

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This review previously ran on this site on January 25, 2026, when the movie premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'The Rivals of Amziah King' is an exuberant mix of genres made wonderful by Matthew McConaughey and newcomer Angelina LookingGlass

It’s difficult to get a handle on what kind of movie “The Rivals of Amziah King” is — part musical hang-out movie, part heist caper, part revenge thriller — but easy to love it, because director Andrew Patterson blends ideas so seamlessly and provides Matthew McConaughey with one of his best roles in years.

McConaughey plays Amziah King, a beekeeper who spends his days tending to his hives and his nights playing bluegrass music with his friends wherever they gather — at someone’s home, at the church potluck or outside a drive-in burger joint. 

It’s at Ulysses’ Drive-In where Det. Sunderland (Bruce Davis) finds Amziah, and asks for help solving a mystery. Sunderland has seized barrels of stolen honey, and he wants Amziah’s expertise to identify where they came from. Amziah goes to work in his honey plant, with help from a former employee, Remick (Jake Horowitz). Remick brings along a buddy, Colemar (Tony Revolori), who gets his ponytail caught in Amziah’s honey extraction machine — which results in a moment of bloody comedy in which Amziah and his friends rush Colemar to a hospital to get his scalp reattached.

Amziah’s default mode is energized zen — acting quickly and decisively when needed, but with a laidback attitude that seems pitched perfectly to McConaughey’s “alright, alright” screen persona. In the movie’s first hour, we pick up hints of hard times in Amziah’s younger days, losing his wife to cancer and going through financial struggles with his beekeeping operation. He also mentions casually, in an important bit of foreshadowing, that the honey business “is not full of kind people.”

When Amziah stops at a diner for coffee, he sees that his waitress is a familiar face: Kateri (played by Angelina LookingGlass), for whom Amziah and his wife once served as foster parents. Amziah brings Kateri along to the potluck, where he walks her through the different dishes and teaches her “there’s truth and there’s lies” in what’s served. McConaughey is having a ball chewing through writer James Montague’s dialogue, just as much as he enjoys breaking into song with his pals.

Amziah brings Kateri under his wing, teaching her how the honey business works. Amziah tells her about the three types of bees — the drones, the workers and the queen — and how a bee colony is like a community, where the bees look after each other to ensure their mutual survival. Kateri quickly learns that the community of Amziah’s friends work the same way in their Southern town. (The movie was filmed in Alabama and Oklahoma.)

For the first hour of a movie that’s slightly over two hours long, Patterson — who made a powerful debut with his 2020 radio-based supernatural thriller “The Vast of Night” — introduces us to Amziah and this community, and shows how welcome Kateri becomes. It’s such a pleasant place to visit, with food and music and camaraderie in generous amounts, that you scarcely notice that the plot hasn’t really kicked in. Then it does, with pivotal events for Amziah and his bees that put Kateri on a path toward justice and maybe some revenge.

Amziah’s friends — including Remick, the heavily accented Timmy (Scott Shepherd) and Amziah’s lawyer Rippy (Rob Morgan) — provide Kateri with support and guidance. She’ll need it, because she’s up against a ruthless agriculture tycoon, Dob McCoy (Kurt Russell). 

In a movie loaded with treasures, including a bluegrass soundtrack co-produced by the legendary T-Bone Burnett and featuring the Avett Brothers, McConaughey’s performance is an all-timer. He plays Amziah as a man holding his regrets but not weighed down by them, looking at life with a battered but still open heart. You’d have to go back a decade or more, maybe to “Interstellar” or “Magic Mike,” to find him in better form.

One of the wisest things McConaughey and Patterson do in “The Rivals of Amziah King” is to transfer the dramatic load to young LookingGlass, who makes a compelling movie debut. (She’s an Indigenous actor, with a recurring role last season in “Dark Winds.”) LookingGlass doesn’t say a lot, but within her stillness is a fire that fuels Kateri’s drive to make right what’s gone wrong. 

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‘The Rivals of Amziah King’

★★★★

Opens Friday, August 14, in theaters. Rated R for language and some grisly images. Running time: 130 minutes.

Review: 'The End of Oak Street' pits a suburban family against monsters, in a satisfying mix of Spielberg's America and 'Twilight Zone' menace

The suburban horror-thriller “The End of Oak Street” is an efficient machine for delivering shocks with classic storytelling and modern movie technology — and gives a solid cast, led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, room to battle monsters like in the good old days. 

It’s the early ‘80s — an early reference to Carl Sagan’s 1980 miniseries “Cosmos” is a clue — in a typical Michigan suburb. During a neighborhood block party, we get to know the Platt family: The dad, Greg (McGregor), who’s working odd jobs to augment his income, though it’s clear he’s hiding something beyond his drinking; the mom, Denise (Hathaway), whose writing a novel on the sly inspired by her marital disappointments; daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), a Cornell-bound science nerd; and Brian (Christian Convery), who accidentally broke another kid’s arm and is trying to dodge that kid’s bullying brother.

Writer-director Brian Robert Mitchell, who made the spookily scary “It Follows” and the head-scratching “Under the Silver Lake,” is going for a specific period here — not just ‘80s suburbia, but the suburban ideal of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” He gets the tone and atmosphere just right, no doubt assisted by his producer, longtime Spielberg devotee J.J. Abrams.

Like those movies, a bright light outside sparks the mystery. Brian sees it first, when he’s looking for the family dog, Starbuck. And the after-effects of that light slowly become apparent — that somehow a large chunk of the neighborhood has been cut out from the rest of the city, and plunked down in a land where dinosaurs exist and are on the hunt.

Mitchell stages some chilling scenes of the Platt family and a neighbor girl, Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis), dodging the massive creatures and eventually fighting back. (I didn’t realize how satisfying it would be to see Hathaway wielding a shotgun.) And those scenes are interspersed with some genuinely heartbreaking moments of the Platt family desperately trying not to fall apart under the stress of trying to survive.

“The End of Oak Street” also shows another important influence for Mitchell: “The Twilight Zone,” and the way Rod Serling’s classic series could use horror and science-fiction tropes to explore timely stories of human frailty and resilience. You may think the Platt family will survive their ordeal (and I’m not going to confirm or deny your conjecture), but you know they will be changed when it’s over.

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‘The End of Oak Street’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language and suggestive material. Running time: 99 minutes.

Review: 'PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie' isn't as bad as the first two movies in the series, because who doesn't enjoy dinosaurs?

It would be technically true, if a desperate bid to get blurbed in a movie ad, to say that “PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie,” the third in the preschool-targeted animated films, is the best movie in the series. It’s not great, but the first two were pretty terrible examples of toy commercials masquerading as entertainment.

This installment proves the wisdom of a Hollywood maxim: Any story can be improved by putting dinosaurs in it.

The PAW Patrol, if you don’t know already, is a plucky and well-equipped group of young dogs who perform daring rescues by land, air or sea. As this movie starts, the squad has just saved a family — the parents are voiced by Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton, because why not? — whose yacht caught fire. Then their massive aircraft carrier (available where you buy toys) hits a storm and runs aground on an uncharted island.

The PAW Patrol find a population of dinosaurs, but they’re all friendly. That’s because of the island’s other inhabitant, a pup named Rex (Hayden Chamberlen), who lives in harmony with the Dinos. Rex is depicted using a dog wheelchair, and it’s actually nice to see that no one mentions it.

What passes for a plot here centers on the PAW Patrol’s old nemesis, Mayor Humdinger (voiced by Ron Pardo), recently paroled from prison and eager to make a fortune mining the diamonds discovered on Dino Island.

Grown-ups could make an argument to be made that Dino Island was better off before the PAW Patrol came, and brought humans in contact with the dinosaurs. But that’s not the movie director Cal Brunker and his writing partner, Bob Barlen, are making for the little ones.

This is a light, candy-colored adventure whose unnecessary celebrity voice cameos (including Terry Crews, Jennifer Hudson and Bill Nye) are alleviated with positive messages — like when the pups’ 10-year-old human caretaker, Ryder (voiced by Henry Bolan), gives pep talks to a doubting firedog Marshall (voiced by Carter Young). 

“PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie” isn’t great entertainment, but any moviegoers with small children will appreciate the positivity and the action — and, on a hot August day, the air conditioning in the theater is a plus.

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‘PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for mild action/peril. Running time: 88 minutes.

Review: 'One Night Only' serves up a rancid rom-com premise that not even Monica Barbero's abundant charms can save

It’s strange for a movie with a premise as idiotically off-track as the one in the rom-com “One Night Only” to get made. Usually, someone at the studio or among the producers would strangle a bad idea like this one in the crib, rather than feed it and let it grow into a full-scale terrible movie.

The premise is laid out in the opening seconds — that sex between unmarried adults is illegal in the United States, and everyone has been fitted with a sensor on their wrists that alerts the cops if two consenting adults are making the beast with two backs outside the confines of marriage. There is an exception, for one night a year, 12 hours where anything goes if all parties are OK with it and wear condoms.

Think of it as “The Purge,” the franchise where all crime is legal for one night, but with consensual intercourse. And, like “The Purge,” the premise of “One Night Only” leads to a lot of questions — the biggest being “who the hell would agree to this?” and “why hasn’t the overthrow of the government started yet?” — that the movie doesn’t come close to answering.

There’s a movie-logic reason for such a premise, which is that romantic comedies need a reason to keep their central couple apart for as long as possible. In the old days, social norms, religious admonishments and the Hays Code — Hollywood’s prudish self-policing policies, which invented rules like having even married couple sleep in separate beds onscreen — took care of that. In more liberated times, it’s gotten tougher to keep the walls of Jericho (like in “It Happened One Night”) upright. 

The couple that director Will Gluck (“Easy A,” “Anyone But You”) and screenwriter Travis Braun are trying to keep from making whoopee are Allie (Monica Barbero), a singer who makes a living turning pop songs into pharmaceutical jingles, and Owen (Callum Turner), who owns a pizzeria.

Owen’s plan for the evening is to hook up with his longtime girlfriend, Malika (Maya Hawke), and propose marriage. Allie’s itinerary calls for her and her best pal, Jacinda (played by the singer King Princess) to go looking together for a couple of hot guys at a bar. Both plans are thwarted by the other party — Malika wants to sleep with a hot neighbor, while Jacinda finds a sexy prince (Okieriete Onaodowan) while Allie’s in line for the bathroom.

Allie’s lesbian roommate (Quintessa Swindell) tells Allie to go out there and find someone, and gives her a dress with fewer square inches of fabric than a hand towel to attract a likely partner for the night. Owen can’t go back to the apartment he shares with Malika, or hang out with his mom, Linda (Molly Ringwald), because she’s got plans with her boyfriend, Bob (LeVar Burton). 

Out on the streets, Allie and Owen keep running into each other — and they ignore the signs from the universe, and bad screenwriting, that they should be together.

There are some funny moments here and there. My favorite is when Allie tries to navigate a bar full of desperate guys (including “Succession’s” Cousin Greg, Nicholas Braun, and “SNL’s” Ben Marshall) looking for a woman who will indulge their kinks. Or there’s an extended joke where Owen goes from bodega to bodega to find one that still has condoms in stock.

But the repressive and stupid unfairness of the mandate that sets up the 12-hour scenario, and the forced way Gluck includes clocks in every scene to remind inattentive viewers of the countdown, can’t be overcome. That’s especially sad for Barbero, who’s an incredibly charismatic performer — as she proved playing Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and getting an Oscar nomination for it — who deserves a star vehicle that’s not as aggravating as “One Night Only.”

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‘One Night Only’

★1/2

Opens Friday, August 7, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sexual material, language and brief nudity. Running time: 102 minutes.

Review: 'The Samurai and the Prisoner' is an elegantly staged and intense drama of power and hubris in 16th century Japan

A sharply tense thriller wrapped in the trappings of a period drama, writer-director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “The Samurai and the Prisoner” is an elegantly mounted tale of a warrior who thinks he’s outsmarted his enemies — only to find the threat was under his own roof.

It’s 1587, and the samurai commander Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) has betrayed his warlord, Nobunaga Oda, and has fortified his position in Arioki Castle. Surrounded by advisers and generals, Murashige is sure that Oda can be defeated, particularly if he enlists other samurai to change their allegiances. But Murashige’s methods — particularly his decision not to kill his prisoners, in the honorable tradition — confuse his supporters, who fear Murashige is showing dishonor and that no samurai will join his side.

When Oda sends an emissary, Kuroda Kanbei (Masaki Suda), to negotiate a truce, Murashige throws Kanbei in his dungeon. When another prisoner, another warlord’s son, Jinen, demands he be killed, as is customary, Murashige refuses, and makes sure there are no weapons in his cell that he could use to kill himself. When Jinen ends up dead anyway, Murashige has a mystery to solve — and only Kanbei, who is given the facts of the case, can solve it.

This pattern repeated himself, through the seasons, and Murashige can’t figure out why he’s plagued with unexplained deaths. He talks about it with his wife, Chiyoho (Yuriko Yoshitaka), but her advice is clouded with the knowledge that she belongs to the same religious order as Jinen, and believes in honor being upheld through bloodshed. Kanbei, locked up below the castle, seems to be the only one who understands Murashige’s problem — but, given his bloody incarceration, what motive does he have to help his jailer?

It’s a bit surprising to learn that Kurosawa is not related to the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, in part because Murashige’s attempts at interrogating his underlings and parsing through stories that don’t agree with each other bears a striking resemblance to the older man’s classic memory drama “Rashomon.” Kiyoshi Kurosawa also stages some impressive samurai fight scenes, reminiscent of his namesake’s films, like “The Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo.”

That’s enough comparisons, though. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s novel stands up on its own. “The Samurai and the Prisoner” is sweeping yet intimate, and moves from whisper-soft to bold and brash as Murashige slowly discovers who he can trust in his castle — and the chilling answer is that he can’t even trust himself.

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‘The Samurai and the Prisoner’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for bloody violence. Running time: 148 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.