Opening with flesh and blood, Jane Schoenbrun's latest work, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is a continuation of the queer exploration found in their previous films, We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, yet more as a bold, confrontational breakthrough.
Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a talented young filmmaker and devoted fan of the cult horror franchise ‘Camp Miasma’, who is directing its latest remake and finally living out her dream. Her journey leads her to Billy Presley (Gillian Anderson), the actress who played the ‘final girl’ in the original film and is still living in the very house where it was shot.
Sitting by the fireplace, sharing stories and KFC, the two form a tender connection through their shared devotion to the fictional world of Camp Miasma, and from there, something deeper and stranger begins to unfold.
Schoenbrun is unbelievably good at creating a visual world that feels both nostalgic and deeply melancholic. In the opening credits alone, they build the mythology of Camp Miasma through faded newspaper clippings, worn-out merchandise, and scratchy VHS tapes, evoking a distinctly 1980s sense of longing that envelops the audience from the very first frame.
The house itself is wrapped in warm vintage décor, as is Gillian Anderson's character, whose presence stands in quiet contrast to the harsh winter storm raging outside. Just as Schoenbrun's protagonists are often drawn to television screens as if possessed, the world of Camp Miasma casts the same spell on the audience. Its nostalgia is so powerful, and its sadness so haunting, that it makes you yearn for a past that has long disappeared, or perhaps never existed at all.
Schoenbrun's films have always been about queerness, but what makes them so special is not simply their engagement with queer identity itself. Rather, it is the way they bind fictional imagination to the process of self-discovery.
Like other queer films premiering at Cannes this year, such as La Bola Negra and Coward, the film reminds us once again that art and literature have always been deeply intertwined with queer liberation. But unlike filmmakers who make straightforward ‘love letters to cinema,’ Schoenbrun doesn't merely connect cinephiles to their characters thematically. They want fiction to enter the flesh and bones of their characters.
We see Billy become a mentor figure, guiding Kris as she explores her desires through her fascination with ‘Little Death’, the villain of the Camp Miasma franchise. What emerges is a surprisingly direct examination of the relationship between female desire, sexual fantasy, and fictional narratives. It is a connection that is incredibly common yet rarely acknowledged so openly on screen. Through the slasher genre and fandom culture, Schoenbrun reveals how fiction can become a vessel for desire, projection, and self-understanding.
Where I Saw the TV Glow follows a small-town boy who evades his true self and remains trapped in stasis, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma has its protagonist confront the monster head-on. The two films feel deeply connected, but Teenage Sex is undoubtedly the braver work, a complete eruption: more visceral, bloodier, and more uncompromising. If I Saw the TV Glow explores how repressing one's identity can slowly destroy a person from within, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma becomes a full-throated reckoning with female sexual desire.
At a moment when queer films are claiming ever more space at major festivals, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma stands apart as something genuinely ahead of its time. Because it is not simply a film about queer people, the entire experience has been made queer. It doesn't just depict queerness. It is queer itself.
The film screened at the 2026 Fantasia Festival after enjoying its world premire at the Cannes Film Festival. Visit its official page at the festival's official site for more information.