I do not like I Saw the TV Glow. I know the film has a hugely popular following, especially among the queer community, but that movie was a bridge too far for me. So naturally, when I heard that Jane Schoenbrun had come out with a new instantly popular film, I approached it with some degree of skepticism.

To be sure, there is a strong family resemblance. Both movies are about childhood nostalgia, as represented by a campy pastiche of some wildly popular franchise trend from yesteryear. Both movies are about a couple of characters who live obsessively within those franchises because they can’t or won’t live within the real modern world. In both cases, this leads to trippy visuals and psychological horror as we and the characters start to question exactly how fictional their favorite shows and movies really are.

Yet there are a number of reasons why Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma worked for me, while I Saw the TV Glow didn’t. Let’s take it from the top.

This time, the premise revolves around “Camp Miasma”, a long-running slasher horror series that started back in the ’70s. Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp are the clearest points of reference, but there are flavors of Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween in there as well. Point being, it’s a series primarily known for gruesome kills, gratuitous sex, and a victim pool of comely teenagers played by twenty-something actors.

The series’ main slasher is Little Death, here played by Jack Haven. Yes, the series is so heavily sexualized that the villain is named after a euphemism for orgasm. Even better, the character is iconic for his double-pointed (innately phallic) spear and his head shaped like a ceiling A/C vent. I know that sounds weird — and it damn well looks weird — but you’ll have to take my word and believe that the vent mask is more sexual imagery in ways I can’t sufficiently describe here. Also, the mask lends itself to a concentric square pattern that makes for a neat recurring visual motif.

(Side note: How strange that there are two movies out right now in which a ceiling vent is so important to the themes and plot.)

Anyway, while the Camp Miasma series started out as massively successful and influential, each successive entry kept dropping off further and further in quality until the franchise finally went dormant. This naturally means the franchise is primed for a reboot. But there’s a problem here, and it’s endemic to Hollywood at large.

On the one hand, Hollywood execs and bigwigs only want to invest in surefire bets and established IP. On the other hand, any franchise IP that’s been around for any length of time has some kind of history with topics and prejudices that haven’t aged well. Just look at the sexism prevalent in 1960s media, or the casual homophobia of the ’80s. Hell, you don’t even have to go back that far — Insidious is getting another chapter this weekend, after the shit they pulled in the second entry thirteen years ago! And let’s not even get started on all the efforts to keep Harry Potter profitable despite all the racist issues in the text and the numerous issues with the author…

Getting back to the point, the studio execs want to somehow reinvent this franchise and reboot it for a more culturally sensitive audience. A tall order, given the sexism and transphobia inherent in the established franchise lore.

Enter Kris Williams, played by Hannah Einbinder. She’s a young queer woman with she/they pronouns and a shaky polyamorous relationship. She’s also fresh out of film school and she’s been a lifelong Camp Miasma fan ever since her sexual awakening at a young age. We’ll come back to that.

Anyway, Kris gets the job writing/directing a reboot of Camp Miasma, with the studio mandate of revising the origin story into something that will bring on new fans without alienating the old ones. And Kris’ first order of business is to visit the original franchise star.

Unfortunately, Billy Presley (played at two different ages by Gillian Anderson and Amanda Fix) dipped out of the franchise and declined any future appearances after starring as the Final Girl of the first movie. In fact, apart from a handful of smaller roles, she’s disappeared from public life entirely. Thus Kris finds her as an eccentric recluse living in — of all places — the remote campgrounds where the original film was shot. And we’re off to the races from there.

So, why is Camp Miasma so much better than Glow? First of all, our main characters of Glow were a couple of ignorant kids while Kris and Billy are both full-grown adults. Not only that, but one of those adults is a professional filmmaker (albeit a relatively inexperienced one) while Billy was directly involved in making the original movie. Thusly, we’ve got lead characters who are much better equipped for insightful commentary on the movies, tropes, characters, themes, and genres that the film was built to deconstruct.

Not only that, but the characters are all so much more directly involved in the pastiche this time, which gives them more agency in the plot and makes for a conflict with deeper themes about the state of modern media. To wit: The studio execs are only interested in this franchise — or its fanbase, or its filmmakers, or other people in general — to the extent that it makes them money. Which is exactly why they hired a pliable and expendable young token queer with just enough credibility to attract a new audience, but without enough actual leverage to get final cut.

By contrast, Billy has completely and entirely given up on show business, or any other kind of business. In fact, there’s not much of anything that exists for her outside the world and characters and concepts of Camp Miasma. And Kris is stuck trying to find a happy medium between the two, managing the impossible task of placating the soulless corporate execs until they let her make something she finds emotionally and spiritually fulfilling.

Easily my biggest gripe about Glow was in how damned opaque it was. I know there’s been a lot of ink spilled about that movie as a trans allegory, but I’m not seeing it. The film is practically an inkblot, so vague and abstract that anyone could make a reasoned argument that it’s about pretty much anything.

While Camp Miasma is no less heightened or trippy, it is far less abstract. This is indisputably a movie with a statement to make. Case in point: There is no room for interpretation about the characters’ sexuality. Kris in particular is right up front in identifying herself as gay. Kris and Billy (note the gender-ambiguous names) each go into exhaustive detail about their sex lives, their first times, who and what they’re attracted to, what it takes for them to orgasm, and so on.

At this point, you may be wondering how far the filmmakers go in portraying a romantic/sexual lesbian relationship onscreen. Put it this way: On a scale of The Prom to Blue is the Warmest Color, I’d put this one smack in the middle between Carol and Ammonite.

Anyway, it’s a crucial point of the film that the original Camp Miasma was this pivotal moment of sexual awakening for Kris. Somehow, this eight-year-old girl got her hands on a slasher movie, watched 24-year-old Billy playing a 17-year-old virgin getting naked in bed with a man for the first time, and that was when Kris first discovered she was gay. So she made an important self-discovery, despite living with a family that would later disown her for it. Good for her.

Then again, it’s important to remember the context. We’re talking about a slasher movie, in which beautiful women getting naked and engaging in sex is pretty much always immediately punished by a spectacularly gruesome dismemberment. It’s worth taking a moment to think about how that association could screw with Kris’ sex life. In fact, considering how Kris is a working artist more in love with filmmaking than with any potential partner, cinema has messed up her romantic/sexual life in a great many ways.

Oh, and without getting into details, we eventually learn that Billy really did lose her actual virginity on set while shooting that exact scene. Naturally, this has a similar and equally far-reaching effect in radically different ways.

All that’s left to say about Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is “Now that’s more like it!” It’s a sexy, stylish, subversive head trip with fascinating visual motifs, potent queer representation, and cleverly twisted insight into how our relationship with media affects our relationships with each other. This right here is the movie that’s worth Schoenbrun’s reputation, and I’m delighted to see how far they’ve come since Glow.

Granted, this won’t be for all tastes. I don’t expect this will lure too many ticket sales away from Spider-Man or CGI dinosaurs. But there’s a lot of great prestige arthouse cinema on screens right now (and coming up soon), and anyone with an appetite for it should absolutely keep an eye out for this one.