How Jane Schoenbrun Has Fun With Horror (and Chicken) at Camp Miasma

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How do you make a meet-cute scene intriguing but also a little weird? Set it in a secluded cabin and throw in a lot of fried chicken.

In this sequence from “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a movie director who has been asked to reboot “Camp Miasma,” a popular horror franchise. She hopes to cast Billy (Gillian Anderson), who played the final girl in the first “Miasma” movie. Kris meets with Billy at her home, a cabin at the abandoned summer camp where the first film was set. Things get bizarre and funny from there.

“In its simplest form, this is kind of a movie about two women matching each other’s freak,” the film’s director Jane Schoenbrun said in an interview.

“Billy, I think, is very aware of how strange this visit is and is kind of having some fun with Kris here.”

Billy tells Kris that her day got away from her and she realized she didn’t have food in the house for dinner, so she made an emergency takeout run. “I hope you like fried chicken,” Billy says, plating enough pieces of KFC to feed an entire family.

That chicken, and the dipping sauce that goes with it, spurs a bonding moment between the characters, as they try to feel one another out.

“This is a point in the movie where we don’t quite know what movie we’re in for, Schoenbrun said.

“What is about to happen is that the movie essentially slows down and we just hang out with these two while they eat chicken and smoke weed and talk about feelings for 20 minutes, like freaky, fried chicken ‘My Dinner With Andre.’”

Read the “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” review.

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