Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

This isn’t the masterpiece that many have claimed, but it is undoubtedly original—and perhaps that’s the point.

Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is quite something. What exactly that is is hard to put your finger on. This is a film that might well be saying very specific things to certain people but may be interpreted in a number of different ways by others. To say that the film is ambitious is to almost do it a disservice. Whatever your view on it, it’s impossible not to be impressed by Shoenbrun’s work here.

Hannah Einbinder plays film director Kris, an indie loyalist who has been thrust into the mainstream to resurrect the Camp Miasma horror film franchise, one that, just like its obvious influences, died one death after another with every single pointless sequel. Kris has managed to obtain a meeting with the final girl from the original Camp Miasma film, Gillian Anderson’s Billy, who now rather bizarrely lives as a recluse at the abandoned camp where the initial film was shot. The aim is to recruit Billy for this new version of the film, one that Kris is determined to put a new face to. Kris has strong feelings about the way of the cinematic world now, all of which come out when she sits down for a KFC dinner with Billy.

Kris begins to explain that Camp Miasma was her “queer awakening” and lead her to a place now where she uses she/they pronouns and is in a polyamorous relationship with a girlfriend who also frequently sleeps with other people: the one we see throughout the film is a moustachioed man named Thor. Billy immediately recognises how insecure and deeply repressed Kris is with this set-up, and after some cajoling, learns that Kris struggles with the act of sex entirely. Turns out, she just needs to learn how to conjure up the exact feeling of having sex whilst being killed by the ventilation-faced killer from Camp Miasma, Little Death.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma delves into the history of horror films (complete with some glorious use of VHS tapes and camera filters), and while the Kris might hate the idea of calling the film ‘meta’, it undoubtedly uses such an idea brilliantly. Schoenbrun delves into the genre ideas of horror and questions them all openly, calling to mind films like De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and more recent fare like Yann Gonzalez’s Knife + Heart (2018) while it also feels like the spectre of Psycho (1960) looms large. These films all toy with identity and the inner struggle to find your true self. Kris’s meeting with Billy is her true coming out moment; on more than one occasion she refers to her own perceived coming out moment, but it’s only towards the end of the film where we truly see Kris finally freeing herself from a somewhat claustrophobic existence. Norma Desmond is mentioned on a few occasions, and it's difficult not to ascertain that Kris has taken on some of that delusion- convincing herself that she’s a part of these labels, and that her opinion on cinema in general is the correct one because she’s repeatedly satisfied herself of it.

The middle section of the film does slightly drag, as we’re treated to various sequences of the fictional Camp Miasma film, and while it serves a purpose in attempting to offer us an idea of what exactly it is that we’re watching, it stretches a point. More interesting is the film’s depiction of its teen killer, a boy whose treatment at the hands of his parents led to inevitable problems later on in life. In the magical realism sequences where his origin story is told around a campfire, the film openly invokes David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), a physical reference that echoes the thematic ambition of Cronenberg’s film.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a slasher film in which you’re never quite sure of what it is exactly you’re watching. It could be argued this is Schoenbrun's attempts to celebrate personal self-discovery within the prism of genre horror conventions, and in this regard the film succeeds. This isn’t the masterpiece that many have claimed, but it is undoubtedly original, and perhaps that’s the point Schoenbrun – and by design, Kris – is making. It’s very self-aware, almost to a fault, but it’s very well made, superbly acted, and it will be interesting to see where Schoenbrun goes from here. ★★★½

7.8/10