Verdict: A Messy, Mesmerising Indie Horror Romance
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is an indie horror romance in which Jane Schoenbrun uses a retro slasher framework to tell a sensual, queer psychodrama about desire, shame, and the lingering power of cult cinema.
This is a good film, sometimes a great one, and often a frustrating one. As a Jane Schoenbrun slasher, it is their most audience-friendly work so far, built on the familiar bones of an ’80s camp chiller but wrapped around a slow-burn romance that flirts with art-house restraint. The bottom line: if you come for clean, efficient scares, you may chafe at its shaggy structure; if you’re hungry for a thorny, erotic character piece that happens to gush blood, you’ll find plenty to chew on.
The movie’s engine is the relationship between Kris (Hannah Einbinder) and Billy (Gillian Anderson), and it succeeds whenever it stays locked in their cabin, letting attraction, cinephilia, and trauma simmer. The meta-slasher wrapper, by contrast, feels uneven, but the emotional core is strong enough that the film’s imperfections become part of its strange charm.
Horror and Heat: How Schoenbrun Balances Slasher and Romance
Jane Schoenbrun directs a slasher psychodrama that treats gore and intimacy as two sides of the same obsession, drawing on 1980s slasher tropes to craft a “queer comedy-drama that gushes blood and oozes sensuality.” This Jane Schoenbrun slasher uses the fictional Camp Miasma franchise, complete with its vent-headed killer Little Death, as both text and temptation: Kris’ arousal is tangled with the series’ phallic kill scenes and the post-orgasm “little death” that gives the villain its name.
As a piece of meta-horror, the film riffs on Hollywood’s I.P. addiction and ongoing attempts to “elevate” old properties, all while interrogating moral panic around violent media. According to one review, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma becomes “a metatextual slasher that comments on Hollywood's I.P. obsession as translated into an awakening romance.” The trade-off is that the movie-within-a-movie sections can feel choppy; cutting away from the cabin to extended Camp Miasma sequences occasionally saps momentum from the central relationship.
Still, as an indie horror romance, it is unusually comforting for such a bloody film. Schoenbrun’s choices—matte-painted landscapes, sugar-high candy binges, lullaby-like scoring—soften the edges of the body horror, turning what could be punishing into something warm, even cozy. It’s body horror as blanket, and that’s a rare, distinctive tone.
Gillian Anderson Horror Icon, Hannah Einbinder Breakout
This Camp Miasma review would be incomplete without underlining how much Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder carry the film. Einbinder’s Kris is a queer filmmaker and self-described Camp Miasma superfan, hired to reboot the franchise as a more “prestige” slasher. Anderson’s Billy is the reclusive original final girl, holed up at the snowbound camp where the movies were shot, halfway between faded star and gothic apparition.
The Gillian Anderson horror performance here is grand and sly: bouffant hair, glamorous outfits, and a Southern-tinged drawl paired with the absurdity of serving Kentucky Fried Chicken as a seduction meal. Einbinder, meanwhile, plays Kris as a bundle of nerves and delayed self-knowledge, the “modern hipster cinephile” whose intellectual interest in violent media masks unprocessed desire. Their chemistry is electric, a two-hander that echoes Portrait of a Lady on Fire as they oscillate between mentorship, worship, and lust.
When the camera stays close on them—watching movies, watching each other, talking through shame and kink—the film sings. This is where the indie horror romance premise finds its fullest expression, not in clever references but in the slow, charged negotiations of consent, curiosity, and shared fandom. Even when the script’s meta ambitions wobble, these performances remain a steady, transfixing anchor.
Tone Shift and Trade-Offs in Schoenbrun’s Third Feature
Schoenbrun’s earlier features We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow established them as a uniquely interior, melancholic storyteller. With Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, they pivot toward something more fun and accessible without abandoning their psychosexual concerns. This is their third feature and, in many ways, a tiebreaker: more overtly comic, more openly erotic, and more eager to entertain than their prior work.
That tonal shift comes with costs. The film aims to be both pointed critique of problematically horny slashers and rapturous love story; as one reviewer notes, it is “internally at odds,” its slippery screenplay sometimes losing focus as it jumps between Kris and Billy’s bond and broad satire of studio greed. Extended detours into franchise parody—agents, executives, whole sequences of the in-universe Camp Miasma—are witty in concept but occasionally undercut the intimacy built in the cabin.
Yet the gamble largely pays off. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma captured the zeitgeist at its festival premiere and is already tipped to top year-end lists thanks to its “spark of pointed psychosexual originality.” It may not fully reconcile its romantic tenderness and structural messiness, but few horror films are this willing to be both horny and humane.
Buy if / Skip if
- Buy the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if you want an indie horror romance where slasher gore and queer intimacy are inseparable.
- Skip the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if you prefer tight, straightforward slashers without meta detours or movie-within-a-movie experimentation.
- Buy the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if you are drawn to Gillian Anderson horror roles and want to see her in a seductive, career-highlight performance.
- Skip the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if self-aware commentary on Hollywood franchises and moral panics leaves you cold.
- Buy the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if you loved I Saw the TV Glow but wished for a more overtly romantic, accessible tone.
- Skip the Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma if you are uncomfortable with body horror that links sexual arousal and violent imagery.
