By Variety | Created at 2026-08-07 18:36:53 | Updated at 2026-08-07 20:26:01
3 hours ago
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” in theaters now via Mubi.
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” the third feature from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, is not the film you think it is.
While it does fit thematically with their two previous impressionistic horror movies — 2021’s “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow” — “Camp Miasma” is a funny, campy, bloody and thoughtful story about a hotshot indie director, Kris (Hannah Einbinder), who is hoping to make a new film in the in-universe slasher series “Camp Miasma.” Kris’ journey involves meeting with the reclusive star of the first film, Billy (Gillian Anderson), and learning much more about real-life sex and death than she thought possible.
Schoenbrun spoke with Variety about some of the film’s key scenes, from a very horny chicken finger-dinner to a bloodbath set to Counting Crows, why a comedy felt tonally appropriate and why they feel they must make films.
Where did the idea for this movie come from?
Every one of my films so far has come out of, “What’s a mystery I’m exploring in my life that I actually don’t know how to talk about?” Then the film becomes a way to investigate exactly what my relationship to that mystery is. Maybe not to solve the mystery, but to work through something. For “World’s Fair,” it was essentially figuring out that I was trans. For “TV Glow,” that was working up the courage to transition and deal with the fallout from that.
This film was born from a year or two into transition when I started to actually see the benefits of that decision. Dysphoria was healing. I was starting to feel like myself for the first time, at least since I was a kid. What that meant was exploring a lot of stuff that I had avoided for a long time, primarily around sex, which was both scary and exciting in the way that hopefully the film is both scary and exciting and joyful and tender. I think this film came from a desire to have that same process where, “I know that a thing I’m experiencing right now a lot of people experience when they’re teenagers, a coming of age of sorts or a sexual awakening.”
I want to do justice to the strangeness of that experience. That’s really where it came from. Also, I remember asking my partner, who I’ve been with forever, “What do you think I should do next after ‘TV Glow,’” which was this bloodletting of a movie in many ways. It came from a really painful moment and place. She was like, “I think you need to do something really fun and really gay.” I thought that was correct. From the beginning, it was important to me to make something that expanded the horizons of what I’m allowed to do in my movies. In this case, that meant comedy and goofiness and camp.
Were you always thinking of it as a comedy?
Yeah. It’s very indebted to the romantic comedy genre. Even before it’s a slasher movie, it’s a romance. The horror elements are like seasoning put onto the soufflé of romance that I’m baking. I think I’m funny. I won class clown in high school in the yearbook during senior year. I’ve always been someone who understands the world through humor and comedy, a kind of dark gallows style, a pretty Jewish lens. That’s just an essential part of me. I do think it’s in “World’s Fair” and “TV Glow,” and will be in everything I make to some degree. It felt like this was a project where that could start to come out in a way that, as those movies came out of really intense, specific moments in my life, it didn’t shine through as bright. Which isn’t to say that I won’t make other intense, dark movies that people don’t think are very funny. But I think comedy is here to stay for me, because it’s just such a huge part of how I communicate.
When did you know that Hannah and Gillian’s chemistry together would be a good fit?
I didn’t until I saw them together, which was three days before we started production, when we were rehearsing for the first time. But that day I saw it, and that’s not to say there wasn’t work to do or something to refine in the way that they were interacting with each other, but I do think it’s either there or it isn’t. It was pretty clear from me having them read the lines together for the very first time in a room at a plastic table, with me sitting on the other side of it and filming them on my cellphone, I thought, “Oh, this is going to work.” I forget if it was a choice or not, but I think they didn’t really want to be talking so much before they got there. So there was this element of newness and freshness to figuring it out. We shot so much of their stuff together during the first week of production. So I think you’re catching something there, an energy that if they were old friends wouldn’t have been exactly the same.
Where did the erotically charged KFC chicken nuggets and dipping sauces meal between Kris and Billy develop from?
It’s a movie about sex. It’s a movie about wanting to feel really comfortable with someone. The experience of moving through fear and trauma and all of the things that were making sex dysphoric or dissociative or just plain something to avoid — to get over that, I needed to really have trust with the other person I was exploring those things with. It’s like a first date that ends at the chicken tender place. That is just intrinsic to me. I think it’s my low-culture, high-culture dichotomy. If you can know that in an hour you’re going to be eating candy together, then doing some fucked up kinky shit maybe feels a little less scary.
Very early on, junk food became a running theme in the movie. In many ways, I think we think of the slasher genre as junk food. Even sex in its best form is inherently lavish, like you’re luxuriating in something. It’s luxuriating in junk food. We also have rituals around watching movies with junk food. I remember really early on knowing that we needed to see Hannah in bed with a bunch of candy, watching a scary movie, pouring the Raisinets into popcorn, because that’s a ritual I know. I suspect other people do too. I want it to put you in that state of mind: Even though the places we’re about to go are quote unquote “scary,” it’s also going to be fun and sugary.
It takes an unbelievable amount of effort to make a movie, practically and emotionally. What is it about your personality that you are driven to have this idea, and put yourself through this enormous process of getting it out to the world?
I think it’s very moving for me to be somebody who can make something that means something to someone else. When I was growing up, I was in love with “Buffy” and “Scream” and the music of Elliott Smith, and things that were sad or fucked up or Lynchian; these pieces of pop cultural art that, as a lonely kid who didn’t want to look at themselves, that’s what got me through. I use the word love because I do think there was a love exchange going on there. It was refracted, but being made less lonely by media is one of the most important things that’s religious to me in some way. So the idea that in adulthood, in what I think is the best-case-scenario adulthood in many ways for me, I get to be on the other side of that exchange in some way. That’s an easy thing for me to derive a lot of meaning and identity from.
I think that a lot of the stamina comes from caring deeply about that process. I’ll tell you what I couldn’t do. I couldn’t be a middle manager on anything. I couldn’t be the Taika Waititi directing “Thor” or whatever, having fun with the actors but staying out of the way of the people who got to decide what the movie’s relevance to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was. In school, I was always a B+ student. Most people in my life didn’t really expect much from me, or think I was very smart, because I just didn’t care. It was only once I found something to care deeply about that I started doing the homework. And it feels good. I really think it’s what I’m meant to do. And it is so hard. A lot of that hardness is joyful, you know? You’re working with people, hopefully, that you love and that are amazing artists, creative souls. I think I’ve gotten better with each project, loving the making of the thing, on a daily basis. That’s hard work, but it’s also pleasurable.
I have to ask about the Counting Crows scene, because the “Long December” needle drop was a great juxtaposition to Little Death’s murder spree. What was the process of shooting that scene, and how did you decide that was the perfect song for it?
The process was exhaustive. I literally wrote into the script, “ … and now it’s time for the most ambitious sequence in the movie.” But everyone was the most excited about it. That’s the fun thing when you’re working with a team who is going to be creatively engaged on a personal level. A lot of the key people working with me were people who I had worked with on “TV Glow,” and I wrote it for them. We had literally 100+ hours of meetings about it, grueling, agonizing meetings about wardrobe replacements and how the practical VFX or SFX were going to work with the CGI, and what rigs we needed and how we were going to cheat different moments to make it feel fluid and one-shotty.
And why the Counting Crows? I grew up with the Counting Crows. I have a cousin who was their guitar tech, so I got to go see them as a kid and meet them. But they just never left rotation. I love those records. It was originally going to be R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming,” but when I realized “Long December” could fit, I was like, “Oh, shit, I think that’s better.” It was something about the idea of, “Hey, it’s been a shitty fucking year, but next year’s going to be better.” This well-earned, resilient triumph that felt very core to the movie. Also, the fact that he keeps saying the word “Hollywood,” and we tried to time it so that people are getting their heads chopped off when that’s there.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Watch the “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” trailer below.
