Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Little Death Spiral

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This third movie by Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair, I Saw the TV Glow) is another exploration of the strange intersections between queerness, fandom, and horror. It may be their best work yet. It's so "meta" that it goes all the way around and comes back to being personal. It begins with an amazing montage, depicting the rise and fall and rise again of the Camp Miasma horror franchise, clearly modeled after Friday the 13th; the font on the VHS boxes is identical.

The series is celebrated for its business acumen, amassing huge grosses on small budgets, then ridiculed for the diminishing returns of the sequels, particularly Part 8 (the equivalent of Jason Takes Manhattan). In-between we see the bizarre merch, games, cards, toys, etc. But then, in the internet age, there's a resurgence as bloggers find the queer subtext in the films. This, famously, happened with the maligned A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2. The main villain isn't Jason, but rather "Little Death," who wears a kind of cubic air-conditioning duct on his head. In the scene that follows, Little Death kills a young couple, and the blood geyser that erupts might go higher than Old Faithful.

The main story centers on Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder), a young queer filmmaker whose low-budget debut gained enough attention that she has been hired to reboot Camp Miasma. She becomes obsessed with the actress Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), who played the "final girl" in the original Camp Miasma movie. The reclusive star purchased the actual summer camp set from that film, and now lives there, alone, with her own screening room. Kris drives out in the snow to spend a little time with Billy, perhaps to get some inspiration for how to approach the reboot.

Kris is obsessed with a particular moment in the film, a racy scene in which Billy's character is murdered during sex. Billy confesses that she experienced orgasm during that moment. Kris confesses that she is generally uncomfortable with sex and reaching orgasm is difficult. Kris seems to appear in her own Camp Miasma film, chased by Little Death as everyone in her life is ruthlessly murdered, including her polyamorous partner Mari (Jasmin Savoy Brown), Mari's doofus boyfriend Thor (Aren Buchholz), Kris's agent (Sarah Sherman), and the producers of the new film. She begins fantasizing that Little Death is watching her, as she has sex with Billy. And Little Death does what Little Death does.

The movie is almost experimental in its format, and it's impossible to describe it as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But I was fascinated by the idea that Kris, as a young girl, watching Camp Miasma for the first time, is affected by what she sees on screen during Billy's orgasm moment. It's not only a feeling, but a sensation captured on film and preserved for all time. It may have even had a hand in shaping who Kris eventually turned out to be, as horror movies probably shaped the young Schoenbrun, sexually unsure, but finding comfort in horrific images.

I think this is an exceedingly brave movie, unafraid of exploring the deepest, darkest corners of the psyche, while remaining visual, compelling, emotional, intellectual, funny, poetic, and shocking. Sexuality has been increasingly sidestepped in movies in recent years (Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is a prime example), and I admire Schoenbrun for not only going there, but using their own experiences as a benchmark. That makes Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma one of the best movies of the year.