Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: A Queer Reboot of a Cult Slasher Franchise

Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, follows “Sundance wunderkind” Kris (Hannah Einbinder) as she is hired to revive the 1980s slasher series Camp Miasma. The film centers on Kris’s quest to enlist the original “final girl,” Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), who has lived in seclusion on the abandoned set. As they reconnect, horror set-pieces blend with a sexual undercurrent, using the franchise’s iconic killer—Little Death, a spear-wielding figure with a vent-shaped mask—to explore desire, memory, and queer identity.

Slate

The original Camp Miasma debuted in the early 1980s as a low-budget teen slasher and spawned numerous sequels, gaining a devoted fandom and extensive merchandising. Critics have long debated whether its trans-coded characters and explicit teenage sexuality constitute harmful legacy or early queer visibility. Schoenbrun’s reboot foregrounds that tension, positioning the film as both homage and critique.

New York Times

Schoenbrun—known for the trans-focused art-house films We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow—writes and directs the project with a blend of academic theory and genre affection. The cast includes Einbinder, whose work on Hacks informs Kris’s meta-aware voice, and Anderson, a genre-television legend.

Rolling Stone

The film opened in a limited run at Mubi-affiliated theaters in New York and Los Angeles. According to Deadline, the Cannes-premiering horror will expand to 50+ screens next week and nationally on August 21. This follows a typical indie-horror strategy: festival buzz, limited-theater exposure, then broader distribution.

Deadline Hollywood

Forbes reports a 99 % critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest-rated horror film of 2026, with only a single negative review among more than 100.

Forbes

In interviews, Schoenbrun frames the film as a meditation on how formative media shape identity, noting that Kris’s obsession mirrors the director’s own childhood fixation on low-budget horror. The narrative juxtaposes academic jargon (e.g., Lacan’s *jouissance*) with visceral slasher set-pieces to illustrate the tension between intellectualization and raw desire.

Associated Press

Several critics point out that the original Camp Miasma series contained trans-phobic tropes—most notably a killer whose gender-fluid backstory was presented as pathology. The reboot’s attempt to “paper over” that history is seen as both corrective and risky, with some arguing that explicit sexual content and the portrayal of a trans-coded killer could re-inscribe the very stereotypes it seeks to subvert.

Slate

The movie interrogates how media consumption can become an erotic fixation. Kris’s ability to orgasm only by imagining herself inside the Camp Miasma world serves as a metaphor for nostalgic media dominating personal fantasy. The film also satirizes Hollywood’s “reboot culture,” commenting on the industry’s tendency to sanitize problematic source material while exploiting its fan base. By embedding references to *Psycho*, *The Shining*, and *Videodrome* within a “trash-cuisine” aesthetic, Schoenbrun creates a layered experience that rewards both genre aficionados and viewers attuned to queer theory.

(The) Atlantic

Following the limited-theater debut, the expansion to 50+ screens and a national rollout on August 21 will give broader audiences access. Early box-office projections suggest modest commercial performance, but the strong critical consensus positions the movie as a potential cult classic for a new generation of horror fans and queer cinephiles.

Forbes