Jane Schoenbrun Rebuilds the Slasher Genre Around Trans Identity and Candy in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Jane Schoenbrun's third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is playing in theatres now, having opened on August 7, 2026, after premiering earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival and screening at Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival in July. The film held its New York premiere at Metrograph on August 5. Schoenbrun, who is non-binary, wrote and directed the film. Deadline
Hannah Einbinder stars as Kris, a queer director tapped to helm a new installment of the long-running Camp Miasma horror franchise. Gillian Anderson plays Billy Presley, the actress who played the final girl — the genre's term for the last woman standing — in the original Camp Miasma film. Jack Haven plays Little Death, the slasher's killer who comes to life. Patrick Fischler and Zach Cherry also appear. Deadline; IMDb
Speaking to Deadline, Schoenbrun said the slasher genre has been "catnip to me since I was 10 years old," and that they wanted to remake it "in my own language." They described the genre's DNA as talking about fear and desire, gender and sexuality, normativity and deviance — all "swimming in the toxic soup of the genre." Schoenbrun also acknowledged the slasher tradition's record of problematic trans representation, naming Psycho (1960), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995). Deadline
The film uses candy and junk food as recurring symbols. Schoenbrun told Deadline that this imagery creates a mindset that feels "actually safe" while enjoying something scary or exploring sexuality after trauma. They added that coming into their sexual identity post-transition "kind of required some gummy candy on hand." Nostalgia, Schoenbrun said, was the tool they used to deconstruct the slasher genre, and they called the genre the perfect way to talk about sex and their experience as a trans person learning to inhabit a sexual identity they could feel comfortable within. Deadline
What makes this stand out is the directness of the creative intent. Schoenbrun is not simply working within the slasher format; they are naming its history — its transphobic entries and its obsession with bodies and boundaries — and rebuilding it around a protagonist whose queerness sits at the centre of the frame rather than the margins.
For audiences, that means a film that is talking back to a genre many grew up with, using its own vocabulary of masks, knives and summer-camp dread to carry a story about identity, desire and safety that the older slashers never could.
