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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) Review: Schoenbrun’s Sexy Spectacle of Cinematic Subversion
The American director’s meta story of a queer filmmaker searching to revive a slasher franchise triumphs in sex appeal and self-reflexive silliness.
By Alexandra Hill
J
ane Schoenbrun takes us on a dreamlike sex trip of blood lust and slasher satire in their third narrative feature Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026), supercharged by Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson’s queerly monstrous and monstrously queer performances.
From the opening sequence, Schoenbrun convinces us there is a legacy slasher film franchise known as Camp Miasma soon to receive the axe itself, since decades of “problematic” gender discussion have caused an irreversible viewing slump. The fictional film series depicts a teenage transgender killer named Little Death (Jack Haven) who—with a ceiling vent for a head, of course—emerges from a nearby lake every night and slaughters whichever fresh meat they can find.
The whole shebang is unapologetically meta. Tasked to resurrect Camp Miasma with an origin-story twist, filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) clearly represents Schoenbrun, making a film about a dying genre within a slasher film itself and so on. At one point, the camera enters the world of the first film itself, where Little Death decides its time again to paint the (camp) red with volcanic eruptions of blood and exploding bodies.
Kris is unnerved when she reaches the remote sleepaway camp used as the original film’s shooting location, but soon becomes enraptured by the “final girl” of the first Camp Miasma movie who she finds has never left. Wearing the Southern drawl and droll humour like a glove, final girl Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson) is soon convinced to star in the remake, while smothering Kris in finger lickin’ good sex appeal.
Shot on 35mm, Camp Miasma's visual granularity crackles like a cosy campfire across the painted snowy backdrops surrounding the camp, acting as another nostalgic homage to studio-based filmmaking of the 1940s and 50s. Within this warmth, the pair consume a gluttonous number of movie-night snacks together, soon melting into one another.
Whether this is a dream or a nightmare for Kris is by and large the film’s comedic haymaker. Rebooting the Camp Miasma franchise was always Kris’ dream job since she illicitly watched young Billy in the original film’s “climax” (ahem), which ignited her sexual awakening at the age of eight.
But Kris begins to question whether the two are really alone… Billy may not be the only character still haunting the camp… As the heated moans of pleasure echo perfectly against the laboured breathing inside Little Death’s mask, the lines between sexual desire and blood lust are beginning to blur once again…
Blurring, blending, or fusion are tropes Schoenbrun cleverly leverages to ground the fantastical satire in queer discussion. The director links queerness to cultural depictions of monstrosity; a contentious topic critiqued but superbly thrown into relief by the film’s self-reflexive silliness. Little Death’s story is ultimately one of trans liberation, rising up to find release in entering a long, pointy spear into young bodies.
While all of this is unfolding, the film is also building up, and up, and up toward one big climax. To understand how to do the reboot justice, Kris must surrender herself to the full Camp Miasma experience, not just watch it. Reality begins to slip into fantasy; the sexual adventure collides with the sweet release of death itself. Pleasure and pain meet, tipping the film into pure eccentric ecstasy.
This psychosexual chaos does quickly become hard to follow as Kris exits the real for unreal, seemingly abandoning her dream filmmaking gig entirely. But we’re clearly meant to surrender alongside her and just enjoy the ride. Schoenbrun’s direction is unflinchingly expressive, subverting the slasher genre to break the boundaries of cinema itself.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opened Un Certain Regard at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
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