Jane Schoenbrun Directs Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a sharp, playful, sexy and surprisingly warm Hollywood satire about repressed millennials who have outsourced their sexual desire to the movies. The film is a loving send-up of film nerds who’d rather intellectualize and compartmentalize than truly feel in any sort of sensual or embodied way. Packaged in a delightfully erotic and utterly phantasmagoric love letter to 1980s slasher movies, laced with themes of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and soundtracked to millennial dog whistles, it’s Schoenbrun’s battle cry to return to the “flesh and fluids” that made us in the first place.

Jane Schoenbrun’s erotic drama Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma arrives in theaters, starring Hannah Einbinder as a queer filmmaker who risks derailing her career to resurrect a problematic 1980s slasher franchise alongside original star Gillian Anderson.

Reboot Culture Meets Pyschoanalytical Horror

Jane Schoenbrun’s three narrative features comprise a fascinating trilogy about the mediated world and the identities we locate therein. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) sees a young girl losing herself in an occult online game. I Saw the TV Glow (2024) is a dreamy, metaphysical exploration of 1990s children’s television, nostalgia, fandom and trans identity. Their latest film — and arguably their masterpiece, at least so far — is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a sharp, playful, sexy and surprisingly warm Hollywood satire about repressed millennials who have outsourced their sexual desire to the movies. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows Kris (Hacks star Hannah Einbinder), a young, queer filmmaker who’s been given the opportunity to direct a “woke” reboot of the now defunct “Camp Miasma” franchise after her film—which we later discover is essentially Psycho told from the shower curtain’s perspective—made her a breakout star at Sundance.

Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is hired to write and direct a Camp Miasma reboot and she wants to lure original star Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) back. Camp Miasma was a summer camp slasher movie with more sequels than Friday the 13th. Kris, a queer filmmaker, acknowledges that some transphobic elements in the Camp Miasma mythology will have to be updated. Sleepaway Camp was a real 1983 slasher movie with a gender twist, but Camp Miasma’s killer, Little Death (Jack Haven), is an exponential riff on the kind of representation LGBTQ viewers had to tolerate in the ’80s. It is Billy who challenges Kris’s intellectualizing on the importance of slasher movies. Kris can analyze gender politics and Hollywood capitalizing on nostalgic franchises, but Billy reminds Kris what is primal abou

Tracking Down Billy Presley at Camp Tivoli

Determined to bring the original film’s final girl back in the new installment, she travels from New York City to the frozen Pacific Northwest to convince Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson, whose incredible performance can only be described as Dolly Parton meets Norma Desmond) to revive her role. Though Billy lives on the abandoned summer camp where the original film was shot, she’s stayed far away from the franchise, de As Billy Presley, the aging star of the Friday the 13th-style slasher series, Gillian Anderson is the Norma Desmond to Kris’ Joe Gillis, and their Sunset Boulevard is the abandoned summer camp where the film was once shot. Billy now lives there, swanning about, Spending the week at Billy’s isolated cabin, the movies start to bleed into reality.

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA Official Trailer (2026)

Performances and Production Design in a Fever Dream

Schoenbrun weaves the tapestry of “Camp Miasma” with familiar threads pulled from classic horror, noir and slasher movies. Hannah Einbinder plays filmmaker Kris, a Sundance wunderkind tasked with reviving the long-dead “Camp Miasma” horror franchise. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma captures the thrill of discovering yourself through what frightens and excites you, combining the dreamy experimentation of We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and the confidence of I Saw the TV Glow to deliver the boldest, most joyful—and arguably most personal—film in their screen trilogy. The film is a loving send-up of film nerds who’d rather intellectualize and compartmentalize than truly feel in any sort of sensual or embodied way. Packaged in a delightfully erotic and utterly phantasmagoric love letter to 1980s slasher movies, laced with themes of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and soundtracked to millennial dog whistles, it’s Schoenbrun’s battle cry to return to the flesh and fluids that made us in the first place.

Jane Schoenbrun Directs Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma — Photo: dreadcentral.com

The film itself, a playful pastiche of shlocky, problematic slasher films, and send up of the pressure to create within the confines of Hollywood reboot culture, had not left me especially transported. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that song, and the strangely sublime sequence that accompanies it. Schoenbrun is the most high-profile trans director working now and much of the heartbreak, horror and humor of that is embedded in “Camp Miasma,” in which Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a Sundance wunderkind director who has been hired to reboot a 1980s horror franchise and wants to recruit the original final girl Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) for the project. Kris is very much a Schoenbrun stand-in. There is a cruel irony in the fact that Kris, who is queer, has been handed the keys to the fictional “Camp Miasma” series which are famously transphobic. The killer, called Little Death (Jack Haven), is a trans kid who was murdered and who rises out of the lake to slaughter unsuspecting campers. But Kris has always been drawn to the franchise, despite and maybe because of its problematic nature;

The Theatrical Release and Screening Locations

Gillian Anderson (L) and Hannah Einbinder star in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Mubi LOS ANGELES, Aug 3 (UPI) — Meta movies often reward viewers by acknowledging the tropes of the genre on which they are commenting. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, in theaters Friday, uses meta commentary to address what movies really mean to us.