Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma review: Jane Schoenbrun crafts another instant cult classic

No one else is currently making films quite like Jane Schoenbrun. With their first two films – We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow – the writer/director showcased an incredible talent for creating spellbinding, dreamlike atmospheric works that melded a variety of influences including David Lynch, internet ‘creepypasta’ and their own trans identity into something wholly fresh and uniquely disquieting.

Now comes their most high-profile release yet, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which has just opened the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The great news is that this is another immensely mesmeric and evocative piece of filmmaking, one that further cements Schoenbrun as one of the most exciting directors to emerge this decade.

As with TV Glow, the film revolves at least in part around a fictional cult media franchise, with the earlier film’s Buffy-like TV show The Pink Opaque replaced here with a Friday the 13th-inspired slasher series called Camp Miasma (which boasts a masked killer known as Little Death).

Our introduction to this fictional franchise comes via an amusing montage over the opening titles, where we learn of the initial success of the series, a number of subsequent tie-ins including board games and arcade games, a slew of sequels with increasingly hostile reviews, an eventual reclamation from a younger generation of internet-age fans and – ultimately – news of a reboot.

That reboot is to be helmed by an emerging queer filmmaker (Hannah Einbinder) who we join as she prepares to meet the franchise’s original but now largely forgotten ‘final girl’ (Gillian Anderson, complete with a gloriously over-the-top Southern accent).

This actress, we are told, has more than a shade of Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond to her, currently residing at the sleepaway camp used as the set of the original film. It doesn’t take long before we realise she’s something of an eccentric – and Anderson is clearly enjoying herself in what is a captivating role.

Despite a clear sense of shared respect, there is something of a generational divide between the pair to begin with, especially with respect to their views about the Camp Miasma series. While Einbender is keen to dive deep into the series to explore complex underlying themes and narratives, for Anderson only two things ever mattered about the film: "Flesh and fluids."

But as their relationship grows, becoming steadily more intimate, there are fascinating discussions to be had about art, identity, sexuality, desire and otherness – with the exact destination the film arrives at best left as unspoiled as possible before watching.

In many ways, Camp Miasma can be seen as a companion piece to Schoenbrun’s previous effort. Both are often unnerving, deeply personal, soul-searching works that use a mixture of fantasy and reality to explore similar themes, including the power of art (even art which may sometimes be considered lowbrow) to transform people who feel a deep sense of alienation.

Both address the drive to be sucked into a fictional world, not necessarily to escape our reality but to mould it and better understand it, and both also find the brilliant indie singer/songwriter Alex G on soundtracking duties – creating an eerie and vivid soundscape that serves as the perfect accompaniment to the action.

But while Camp Miasma includes moments of the melancholy atmosphere that defined TV Glow, this is – on the whole – a more tonally upbeat film, complete with generous lashings of humour. One of the funniest scenes involves a bunch of glib studio executives who simply don’t get Einbinder’s new vision for the Camp Miasma franchise – a bunch of corporate suits whose plan for the reboot is not born from some life-altering relationship to the originals but out of a wish to commodify them for a quick cash grab. In this Hollywood world of reboots and remakes, that certainly strikes a chord.

The film also functions as a deconstruction of the slasher genre, exploring the reasons for its continued appeal in spite of what can often feel like problematic elements in its history. But if that makes it sound like a dry academic exercise, there’s no reason to fret; this is not some self-serious essay.

Rather, it's an endlessly engaging and often very funny film equipped with arresting imagery, gorgeous design (including some beautiful matte paintings) and no shortage of gleeful gore. Or to put it another way, this is another instant cult classic from Schoenbrun, and it's already fascinating to ponder what they might do next.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 21 August 2026.

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