Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun, 2026)

[The Narrator Returns]

Jane Schoenbrun's next film will be titled Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which they reportedly described as being a cross between Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Friday the 13th. Additionally, they told Gregg Araki that it will be

all about sex—essentially a movie about learning to enjoy sex after transition. Pre-transition, it wasn’t that I was asexual—I had plenty of desire—but having good sex in the wrong body was impossible. What was available was full dissociation, which is obviously a theme in the first two films. … This is literally what my next movie is about, learning to enjoy sex. Just a fun movie about learning how to overcome sexual trauma and stop dissociating during queer sex.

This will shoot this summer with a release next year from Mubi, and it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

[Never Cursed]

Jane Schoenbrun's next film will be titled Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which they reportedly described as being a cross between Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Friday the 13th. Additionally, they told Gregg Araki that it will be

all about sex—essentially a movie about learning to enjoy sex after transition. Pre-transition, it wasn’t that I was asexual—I had plenty of desire—but having good sex in the wrong body was impossible. What was available was full dissociation, which is obviously a theme in the first two films. … This is literally what my next movie is about, learning to enjoy sex. Just a fun movie about learning how to overcome sexual trauma and stop dissociating during queer sex.

This will shoot this summer with a release next year from Mubi, and it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

This sounds great. I am begging them to come up with literally any other title for the thing.

[The Narrator Returns]

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

I'm beginning to get the sense that Jane Schoenbrun is quite the Videodrome fan.

[bdsweeney]

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

I'm beginning to get the sense that Jane Schoenbrun is quite the Videodrome fan.

Despite not being as fond of I Saw the TV Glow as many were, this looks pretty fun.

Anyone recognise which Blue Nile/Paul Buchanan song that is? Shazam isn’t helping.

[Finch]

I thought the font used for the cast and crew names as well as "Coming To Theaters Soon" was the same used for Twin Peaks.

[Matt]

Oddly, the trailer seems to have disappeared from the EW site linked, so here it is on YouTube.

I thought the font used for the cast and crew names as well as "Coming To Theaters Soon" was the same used for Twin Peaks.

Oh, definitely. Schoenbrun proudly wears her influences on her sleeve and is a huge "Twin Peaks" fan. And apart from the clear references to Lynch and Cronenberg and the Friday the 13th series, there's a reference to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with the punk outfit/mohawk wig.

[cantinflas]

Anyone recognise which Blue Nile/Paul Buchanan song that is? Shazam isn’t helping.

Seems that's because it's a new song created for the film called Pain Is the Heart of Love

Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Alex G (aka Alex Giannascoli) has composed the original score for Jane Schoenbrun’s upcoming horror feature Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. He has also collaborated with The Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan on an original song (Pain Is the Heart of Love), which is featured in the first teaser trailer

[Never Cursed]

Won the Queer Palm at Cannes!

[Noiretirc]

Jane Schoenbrun's next film will be titled Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which they reportedly described as being a cross between Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Friday the 13th. Additionally, they told Gregg Araki that it will be

This will shoot this summer with a release next year from Mubi, and it stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

This sounds great. I am begging them to come up with literally any other title for the thing.

I jumped to this thread precisely because of the title!

[brundlefly]

Oddly, the trailer seems to have disappeared from the EW site linked, so here it is on YouTube.

I thought the font used for the cast and crew names as well as "Coming To Theaters Soon" was the same used for Twin Peaks.

Oh, definitely. Schoenbrun proudly wears her influences on her sleeve and is a huge "Twin Peaks" fan. And apart from the clear references to Lynch and Cronenberg and the Friday the 13th series, there's a reference to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with the punk outfit/mohawk wig.

Trailer.

[The Narrator Returns]

The Cannes reactions made it sound pretty distinct (if naturally building) from TV Glow in ways the trailers still seem to be hiding in favor of that same vibe, I would not have guessed from them that this is by accounts an out-and-out comedy in addition to everything else. It’s probably better when I feel confident a trailer isn’t showing me the whole movie.

[The Narrator Returns]

I saw this last night and can confirm it’s out-and-out goofy like the trailers do their very best to hide, and looking at the cast list will give you a good idea of that (my favorite is Kevin McDonald not dialed down at all from an average Kids in the Hall sketch). I laughed quite a bit and once again found a lot of truth in the Schoenbrunian ideas about how our favorite art becomes extensions of ourselves; one big scene is about getting a movie’s iconography stuck in your head until it becomes a mental music video for an “uncool” song you love, which may not resonate for you but sure does for me. The whole is a stranger beast than TV Glow or World’s Fair, making the metaphors less metaphorical than ever but with that hammer clarity muddled into dots only a particular movie loser could connect (said affectionately and as a self-diagnosis, though it’s more of an issue that I don’t care about slashers than it was with creepypastas or Buffy). I look forward to August when I can try to sort out this combo of troubling ache, blatant and moving wish fulfillment, and sour satire that it all but admits is out-of-date. And I certainly look forward to hearing the final needledrop again, which calls back to a throwaway line from TV Glow to sum things up clearer than Schoenbrun does.

[albucat]

Glad to hear it. I read Jane's book and it's kinda just TV Glow 2.0 for about 80% of its story, which gave me some worries about Camp Miasma. I'd love to see something much stranger than that.

[The Narrator Returns]

I was also worried about this being a retread and, whether you're into what it's doing or not, it's setting its own path while still being recognizably theirs. It feels like a bit of a response to how quickly their style hardened into the generic "Schoenbrunian", and I'm not surprised the book might be the trend towards self-parody that prompted this outright parody.

[Lowry_Sam]

I (regrettably) passed on this a few weeks ago when it closed Frameline (SF LGBTQ film fest), I figured I could spare myself $30 just to see it at The Castro a month or so early (I was getting annoyed with the renovations by the end of the festival which makes the theater noisier). No matter how weird it is I doubt I will find it worse than Rose Of Nevada which I went to instead (and my first walkout in years).

[Never Cursed]

"So what?" is the phrase I kept repeating to myself as this dragged on, presenting banal truths and half-formed pop-cultural observations as secret knowledge. Why is it impressive that this film, or the characters in this film, can accurately discuss the tools of filmmaking ("that's a split diopter shot", Hannah Einbinder says, after about ten seconds of the most obvious split diopter shot since de Palma gave up the ghost)? What do the endless namechecked or alluded references to other movies (Sleepaway Camp, Videodrome, Sunset Boulevard) or the parade of cameos (Sarah Sherman, Quintessa Swindell, Patrick Fischler, Eva Victor sporting an insane haircut, Louise Weard as "Queer Assistant", that one guy from The Kids In The Hall) mean? What does it matter that Schoenbrun can present, dutifully, as if fulfilling an obligation, a list of the problematic aspects of slasher films or the making thereof? Yes, they can be so homophobic, and transphobic, and sexist; yes, they function by depicting violence against youthful victims, frequently comely young women in states of undress, using phallic instruments that symbolize adolescent libidinal desire and the approach of sexual maturity. Yes, they have always been made by money-grubbing businessmen and corporations that care about profit over artistic significance (as have all Hollywood movies). But so what if Schoenbrun cannot string these occurrences and modes of analysis into a coherent story or a capacious aesthetic approach? Camp Miasma is a vacant film, lacking a real narrative or much to offer an audience that isn't somehow with Schoenbrun already. Very little happens, and the film spends long stretches of time on pastiches of slashers and their tropes after having already proved its ability to deconstruct them. There is no allegorical meaning in or powerful conclusion to Schoenbrun's dark fable, only a cloudy recounting of their sexual maturation through art. Schoenbrun's passionate cinephilia is evident and sincere, but awkward and hollow in the absence of any function but reference to idiosyncratic interpretation and growth. Their film is very literate and intertextual, but equates referencing and applying this knowledge. They have come out swinging hard in favor of "the movies" (the film's other constantly-recurring aesthetic is a slavish devotion to symbols of movies themselves, a reverential glee at filming VHS covers, video rental stores, film reels, movie posters, DVD cases and players that they hasten to add are just so old, dust-covered, and decrepit...), but they disavow film's power to do more than bring two people together.

Let me be the first to claim that Schoenbrun is capable of doing more than this. I Saw The TV Glow was just as thunderingly obvious and particular to Schoenbrun's life experience as Camp Miasma, but it worked on other, more interesting levels. It sustained a bleak tone without ever succumbing to misery porn or self-pity and made a specific kind of self-denial (refusing to acknowledge one's transness) universally comprehensible and relatable. The prison in which Justice Smith's character has trapped himself sparks self-recognition in most introspective viewers; I Saw The TV Glow is such a painful and successful work because of that powerful cringe response. If Camp Miasma's purpose is to discuss becoming sexually comfortable in a new or newly-changing body, it is far too particular and immature to work in the same way. Its central juxtaposition of orgasm and death, the petite mort with The Big Sleep, is as old hat as the slashers that used it as an aesthetic device, and the literalism with which these themes are invoked (the villain is named "Little Death", the in-universe film is credited to one "Ray Blanchard" in a movie with a graphic description of autogynephilia) makes it more difficult for a general audience to apply the lessons of the film to their own lives. Why make a movie about the allegorical power of movies to influence our own lives and then make it literal and particular and only accessible to people who have already accessed it?

Or maybe the problem is just me. I've felt as out-of-sync with "relevant" movies as I ever have this year; there isn't that much that has made me want to go out to the theater and see new work, and a lot of big populist hits (the torturous Speed Racer being the most egregious example) fell flat when I caught up to them, as though everyone who had seen the movie and written about it had watched a different, more fun version of the film than the one I had just seen. If I were just less uptight, would the dumb "Little Death" joke work for me? I don't know, something about hating the experience of watching this movie got to me on a level worse than just the disappointment it inspired.