‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’ Is the Bloody “Trans Sapphic Ode” We Need Right Now
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson are teaming up for Jane Schoenbrun’s new blood-soaked queer horror film, ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.’
Featured Image: Photo by Sameer AL-DOUMY / AFP via Getty Images
Fresh off its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Jane Schoenbrun’s new slasher Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma already sounds like the perfect deranged queer horror movie 2026 needs. We’re talking blood-soaked camp, psychosexual terror, yearning, fried chicken erotica, and Gillian Anderson playing a weed-smoking former scream queen recluse. Cinema is so back.
Opening Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar, the film stars Hannah Einbinder as Kris, a rising queer indie filmmaker hired to reboot a once-popular 1980s slasher franchise called Camp Miasma. The fictional horror series has since become dated and controversial due to its transphobic undertones, with Kris specifically brought in to “paper over the ugliness,” according to an interview with Variety. But Kris has bigger plans than simply cleaning up a legacy franchise.
She wants to cast Billy—played by Anderson—the original film’s legendary “final girl,” who now lives as a reclusive, stoner, Norma Desmond-type figure at the very same lakeside camp where the original movie was filmed. Already, this sounds iconic before the gallons of fake blood even enter the scene.
The film comes from Jane Schoenbrun, the transfeminine filmmaker behind I Saw the TV Glow and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Variety described Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma as a “wild, hilarious and emotional psychosexual exploration of horror, fandom, identity, pleasure, trauma and awakening.” And yes, “there’s a whole lot of blood.”
According to Anderson, filming some of those blood-heavy scenes became genuinely overwhelming.
“That blood day was pretty serious,” Anderson told Variety. “Just remembering the amount of liquid and how to not drown while shooting the scene.”
Einbinder, meanwhile, explained that she approached the role with complete emotional intensity.
“We shot a lot of very intense stuff and I had to really put myself in the fear and approach it incredibly seriously,” she said. “I was having trouble just regulating my energy.”
Still, despite the turmoil, gore, and panic attacks, it’s obvious the film left a unique impact on both stars.
Anderson called the film a “wild ride,” while Einbinder described the experience as creatively transformative.
Ultimately, she described the film as a “trans sapphic ode to marginalized communities.” It’s also a major career milestone for the actor: “This was my first feature,” Einbinder said. Hacks, the comedy that propelled her into the Emmy-winning A-list, was her first TV show. “I just feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Anderson responded: “I guess in a past life you must have done good!”
And because this is a Jane Schoenbrun movie, the horror comes with a sensual edge too. One scene reportedly involves fried chicken, dipping sauce, blood, and transcendence all at once. Who else is intrigued to see how this scene unfolds?
Between this, the continued rise of queer horror, and lesbians finally getting movies that are allowed to be messy, political, terrifying, horny, and emotionally devastating all at once, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma already feels destined for cult status.
