Film Review: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Plan B Entertainment
In Theaters: 08.21.2026

Despite seeing over a hundred movies per year, there are few moments when I feel really surprised by a film. The fact that the latest film by Jane Schoenbrun is daring and captivating was hardly a surprise, but it never occurred to me that I might feel such a strange connection to a movie like Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder, Hacks), a filmmaker and longtime fan of the cult slasher franchise Camp Miasma, is hired to revive the series after years of increasingly lackluster sequels. The difficulty inherent in rebooting the property is that the original is deemed  “problematic” in the “woke” age, because it’s deeply transphobic with its slasher villain, Little Death (Jack Haven, Atypical, I Saw The TV Glow), portrayed as a “schizophrenic psycho” who was raised as both male and female by insane parents. Kris is keenly aware that she was hired in no small part because she’s queer and she brings with her more favorable optics. In search for inspiration, Kris travels to the abandoned sleepaway camp where the first movie was filmed to track down “horror’s ultimate recluse,” Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson, The X- Files, The Crown), the reclusive actress who played its legendary final girl, who now lives on the property. What begins as a professional meeting quickly becomes an intense, surreal entanglement as Kris and Billy confront the franchise’s strange hold over their lives. As the boundaries between fantasy and reality begin to dissolve, the pair descend into a blood-soaked whirlwind of desire, fear, trauma and self-discovery, as Kris begins to reconsider her understanding of the connection between the stories that shaped her and the parts of her that she’s afraid to let out.

There are so many layers to Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma that it’s hard to know where to begin. The film uses its lurid slasher premise to explore themes of sexual repression, trauma, queer identity and the complicated relationship between art and the people who consume it. I’m a straight, cisgender man who doesn’t like slasher films, so on the surface, this movie isn’t really aimed at me. However, as an actor who has a complex relationship with my experiences playing one of the title characters in Troll 2, an ally with a trans best friend whose experience changed my life and someone who grew up in LDS culture in Utah, the theme of a person defining themselves by their obsession with a trashy horror property (as well as the exploration of repressed desire and internalized shame) felt eerily personal and resonated with me. 

Schoenbrun cleverly delves into how horror can simultaneously traumatize and liberate, turning frightening images into a language for experiences we don’t yet know how to articulate. There’s also a strong message about the difference between observing life and actually participating in it, as Kris gradually moves beyond intellectualizing her sexuality and confronting the fear, desire and vulnerability she’s spent years keeping at a distance. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is simultaneously a critique and a reclamation of the genre’s more exploitative tropes. There’s a scene from the film within a film, as the legend of Little Death is being told, that is powerful and disturbing in the way it mirrors the relentless and active effort we’re to make trans and non-binary people something to fear, and Shoenbrun makes a brave and effective choice to let the scene be blunt while choosing to do so with humor rather than anger. There’s also an element of poking fun at bandwagon wokeness and #MeToo, while thoughtfully addressing issues of consent and the absurdity of the need to make trans women into a threat to women when cismen really have the market cornered when it comes to that sort of thing.

Enibinder is terrific in the lead role of Kris, and she’s the embodiment of everything that makes the film so outstandingly fearless, funny, sexy, sensitive, sarcastic, introspective and unapologetically goofy. Anderson’s portrayal of Billy is a masterclass in how to go for high camp without sacrificing truth, and it’s a performance that’s destined to become a new defining career moment. Haven is hauntingly effective with tongue firmly in cheek as Little Death. Saturday Night Live’s Sarah Sherman as Kris’ agent and Kids In The Hall’s Kevin MacDonald as Anthony, a hotel employee who appeared in one of the Camp Miasma films, provide great comic support.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is not for all tastes, and anyone going into it expecting a Scream-style slasher film disguised as a meta parody is likely to be a bit confused. There’s plenty for genre fans to enjoy, but this is decidedly an arthouse film, and one that is going to spark some deep conversations if viewers aren’t too afraid to have them. —Patrick Gibbs.

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:

Film Review: The Rivals of Amziah King
Film Review: The End of Oak Street

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