Reframing the Slasher: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma at Museum of the Moving Image

Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria is showing "Reframing the Slasher," an exhibition built around Jane Schoenbrun's film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. It opened July 30 and runs through November 8. Admission is free, and the show sits in the ground-floor Founders Hall.

The film is a meta take on the slasher genre. A queer filmmaker, played by Hannah Einbinder, is hired to revive a 1980s and '90s-style horror franchise about supernatural murders at a sleepaway camp. Looking for inspiration, she tracks down the original franchise's reclusive "final girl," played by Gillian Anderson. The film reached theaters on August 7.

The installation pairs screen-used props from the fictional Camp Miasma franchise with movie posters picked by Schoenbrun. The props include VHS tapes, posters, merchandise and a costume. The poster selection includes Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983) and Dressed to Kill (1980). Schoenbrun wrote the descriptive text that accompanies the posters. The notes trace the sources the director drew on, and how each one shaped the genre's complicated treatment of gender, desire and sexual deviance. In all, the show has about 35 objects.

The museum is open Thursday 2–6 p.m., Friday 2–8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m.–6 p.m. It is at 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria. For readers interested in horror history or in queer rereadings of genre cinema, this is an easy free stop, and it fits well into a visit to the rest of the museum.