Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
Handed the reins to resurrect a dying slasher franchise, an enthusiastic young director visits the original film's reclusive star, only to be dragged into a blood-soaked world of obsession, desire, and delirium.
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What critics say influenced Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
That disparity is found in the fandom of many old school horror films—“Friday the 13th,” “Sleepaway Camp,” “The Burning,” and more—where people love the atmosphere, lustful set pieces, and elaborate kills, yet recognize that it’s not exactly “high art.”
Camp Miasma is an 80s slasher franchise once revered and since revived to the point of zombification. Think Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
In the style of the Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp movies, the studio wants Kris to revitalize the flailing franchise and fix the transphobic issues from the original 1980s movie.
The title’s a nod to the Friday the 13th era: like those actual films, Camp Miasma was a big hit that was followed by a string of increasingly bad sequels.
…the Camp Miasma franchise was a series of 80s slasher films in the vein of Friday the 13th…
…pulling from 80s horror franchises like Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp…
That disparity is found in the fandom of many old school horror films—“Friday the 13th,” “Sleepaway Camp,” “The Burning,” and more—where people love the atmosphere, lustful set pieces, and elaborate kills, yet recognize that it’s not exactly “high art.”
In the style of the Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp movies, the studio wants Kris to revitalize the flailing franchise and fix the transphobic issues from the original 1980s movie.
Sleepaway Camp (whose trans killer has long since been reclaimed by many queer horror fans)…
…the added twist is the inclusion of 1983’s Sleepaway Camp, which ends with a transgressive twist that still somehow divides LGBTQ+ film critics, despite its obvious transphobia.
Schoenbrun salutes the greats, namely Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, with reverence.
…it also gives us the kind of imagery you know to expect from someone who grew up watching Sleepaway Camp, Friday the 13th and The Burning…
…writer-director Jane Schoenbrun wears their influences on their sleeve, from Friday The 13th to Videodrome via Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard…
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma portrays Billy as a “Norma Desmond”-type, channelling the eccentric and secretive qualities from the Sunset Boulevard character.
Directly channelling Gloria Swanson’s tragic, forgotten star Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard (1950), she moves across the screen wearing a velvet turban and full makeup with a hypnotic grace and power that commands attention from minute one.
Parallels to Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond are verbally highlighted more than once, as Billy seems to be an enigma living in the ghost of a former life.
Billy swans about in her caftans and turbans, a scream-queen Norma Desmond living in a perfectly preserved museum to her erstwhile stardom (and foundational trauma). Kris, being a compulsive cinephile, privately makes the Sunset Boulevard comparison to her partner, but in a moment of self-doubting anxiety, she later pretends not to know the character’s name in front of Billy.
There’s more than a little Norma Desmond in Billy Presley…
Camp Miasma is an 80s slasher franchise once revered and since revived to the point of zombification. Think Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is a hot young indie-film director tapped to remake Camp Miasma, a slasher film series in the vein of Friday the 13th or Halloween.
If, in the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th, titillation and puritanism went hand in hand—so that sex, especially as experienced by horny teenagers, was gruesomely punished—Camp Miasma sees the slasher itself as a perverse pathway toward sexual satisfaction.
…creating a mash-up of the better-known canon — Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (in order of appearance)…
…one that not only satirizes 1980s horror franchises such as “Halloween” and “Friday the 13th,”…
In doing so it makes one recall the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween franchise (including a killer joke about her lore), and the journey she and other final girls have taken in being the inspiration for generations while acknowledging the toll this fame has had on them.
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John Carpenter’s In Mouth of Madness seems like a probable touchstone, alongside other horror landmarks such as Body Double and Videodrome.
…with touches of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) cleverly deployed along the way.
Like “Videodrome,” their movies treat media as something that doesn’t stay safely on the other side of the screen.
…writer-director Jane Schoenbrun wears their influences on their sleeve, from Friday The 13th to Videodrome via Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard…
Like in "Videodrome," there's a scene where someone inserts a VHS cassette into a gooey, biological aperture.
Aside from the real-life horror classics already mentioned, there are also nods to A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Videodrome, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit.
Camp Miasma is an 80s slasher franchise once revered and since revived to the point of zombification. Think Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Jane Schoenbrun has spoken of the month spent watching all the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels at 11 years old.
…creating a mash-up of the better-known canon — Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (in order of appearance)…
…but also Nightmare on Elm Street and particularly the Sleepaway Camp movies…
…a silent yet compelling Jack Haven) whose vengeance once stood toe‑to‑toe with Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger…
Aside from the real-life horror classics already mentioned, there are also nods to A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Videodrome, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit.
…given that the horror genre has not been kind to trans people, from “Psycho” to “The Silence of the Lambs.”
They indicated that the film would engage with the concept of gender deviance in classic horror films like Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
Schoenbrun doesn’t just have Little Death remind audiences of Buffalo Bill or Angela from The Silence of the Lambs and Sleepaway Camp, respectively, and call it a day.
…with the lingering sex appeal of Jessica Rabbit mixed with the unpredictability of Hannibal Lector looking at Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs…
…felt more in line with a lesser Scream sequel…
Wes Craven's "Scream" sought to dissect slashers, and featured characters who were well-versed in horror movies. But even "Scream" is 30 f***ing years old at this point. Its sequels ran out of critical juice long ago, and its fans have aged into middle-aged a-holes like me.
Wes Craven’s proto-Scream deconstruction of a genre he helped to build.
…territory cleared out by Scream 30 years ago…
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Her chemistry with Anderson is both steamy, electric, and emotionally complex, much like the work of Gershon and Tilly within Bound, as Billy slowly seduces Kris to give what she’s always fantasized about…
…she’s an awkward but lovable 29-year-old with a Bound-inspired tattoo…
…with touches of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) cleverly deployed along the way.
…just as the snow and isolation are meant to invoke “The Shining,”…
Aside from the real-life horror classics already mentioned, there are also nods to A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining, Videodrome, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit.
The movie itself cites Shelley Duvall at one point and, while horror fans might recall the horrendous emotional trauma the actor endured while making Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining as our own expression of knowledge, we lose touch with the fact that a real person went through real trauma that fundamentally impacted them forever.
…its young star, Billy Presley, walked away and became a recluse (parallels are drawn with Shelley Duvall)…