Tasked with rebooting a 1980s slasher franchise, Ava Daniels from Hacks (Hannah Einbinder) enters another complex relationship with an older woman (Gillian Anderson) in this indie oddity they should have called Hack and Slash.

Jane Schoenbrun’s latest feature draws its inspiration from Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp and the genre’s gender critique by Carol J. Clover (who coined the term ‘final girl’). And if that sounds niche, that’s because it is. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is not really the queer slasher flick its protagonist sets out to make, but something much more personal to Schoenbrun, who basically uses the film to play out her fantasy of getting off with Gillian Anderson on a bed of candy.

Relatable as this is, the movie’s airy-fairy approach to story and comedy make it as hard to place as it is to Google, only resembling a horror film in its references. The funniest part is the intro sequence recounting the rise and fall of the fictitious (yet familiar) Camp Miasma franchise, a brilliantly observed pocket-satire of ’80s slasher lore. These in-jokes capture the horror fan’s imagination more successfully than the attempts to reconcile its love for the genre with the sexist and transphobic baggage that entails, a tension that is referenced but never satisfyingly resolved.

The film is ultimately more interested in the genre’s voyeuristic combination of sex and death (Camp Miasma‘s villain is called Little Death), and the transgressive power it has over a young viewer. Schoenbrun seeks to reclaim her own sexual awakening through a misty-eyed reconstruction of a Friday the 13th-style slasher flick, which lovingly articulates the intangible magic those movies possess, even if it’s much better made than they ever were. The result is perhaps best described as horror poetry; self-indulgent but strangely evocative and enchanting if you happen to have an unhealthy obsession or unpopular blog about slasher movies.