After We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, fans of boundary-pushing horror can’t wait to see what Jane Schoenbrun does next. Excitement over Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma intensified when the cast (Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, and Jack Haven) was revealed and then a first teaser arrived. The film is premiering at Cannes ahead of its August 7 theatrical release, and Schoenbrun recently talked about why they wanted to make a slasher movie next.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Schoenbrun explained they’ve been a slasher fan since childhood, obsessing over franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. That fascination became intertwined with Schoenbrun’s experiences and emotions as a trans and nonbinary artist who makes horror films.
“This image of the trans monster kept coming up, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Frankenstein as a constructed body, and there was this lineage of trans people having really complicated feelings about those movies,” Schoenbrun told THR. “In one sense, those are the places where they saw representations that felt familiar or comforting in some way to their own experiences—but also, those movies are super fucking transphobic and problematic.”
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows a young, queer director (Einbinder) tasked with reviving Camp Miasma, a slasher franchise long divided from the heights of its heyday; part of the plan involves convincing the series’ original “Final Girl” (Anderson) to come out of retirement. However, as the film’s official synopsis teases, the two women soon “fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.”
Trans actor Haven, who starred in I Saw the TV Glow, plays “Little Death,” the legendary monster who stalks the Camp Miasma films. Schoenbrun explained, “The idea of them embodying the power of both the killer and the hermaphroditic embodiment of the orgasm—if I want to see that shit, someone else is going to want to!”
If it sounds like Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is designed to deliver frights as well as spark thought-provoking conversations, that sounds like what Schoenbrun had in mind—but they also want fans to have a good time.
“This movie was very consciously designed to be fun … and to bring in a lot of people to have a discussion about sex and gender and overcoming trauma,” Schoenbrun says. “I don’t know any other movies—certainly any other Hollywood movies—that are having that conversation this way, from this perspective.”
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma hits theaters August 7.
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