Jane Schoenbrun On Deconstructing The “Toxic Soup” Of The Slasher Genre In ‘Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma’: “It’s There In The DNA”
Filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun has discussed how their new film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, deliberately picks apart the conventions of the slasher genre while drawing on personal experience as a non-binary director. Speaking to Deadline, Schoenbrun explained that horror's familiar comforts, such as candy and junk food imagery, create a safe space to explore frightening or vulnerable material, a dynamic they compared to navigating their own sexual identity after transitioning. The film matters as a meta, genre-aware take on slashers that consciously grapples with the genre's fraught history of trans representation.
Starring Hannah Einbinder as a queer director recruited to reboot the long-running "Camp Miasma" franchise, the film also features Gillian Anderson as the original's "final girl" and Jack Haven as the killer, with the pair spiralling into a psychosexual entanglement as the villain comes to life. Schoenbrun, who has been drawn to slashers since childhood, acknowledged problematic trans portrayals in films such as Psycho, Sleepaway Camp, The Silence of the Lambs and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, arguing that questions of fear, desire, gender and sexuality are inherently woven into the slasher genre's DNA.
- Jane Schoenbrun discusses new meta slasher film Camp Miasma with Deadline
- Film explores trans identity and sexuality through horror genre tropes
- Stars Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson and Jack Haven
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Jane Schoenbrun is a filmmaker known for work exploring gender identity and the internet, and their new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma revisits the slasher horror genre, in which a masked killer stalks and murders a group of young people, often at a remote setting such as a summer camp. The film reboots a fictional franchise called "Camp Miasma" and stars Hannah Einbinder as a queer director hired to make the new instalment, alongside Gillian Anderson and Jack Haven.
Slasher films have a long history, but critics and LGBTQ+ audiences have often pointed out that the genre has repeatedly used transgender or gender-nonconforming traits to signal villainy, in films such as Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs. Schoenbrun, who is non-binary, has spoken about growing up drawn to slashers despite this uncomfortable legacy, and has used their own film to examine that history directly rather than simply repeat it.
This background matters because it explains why the film is being discussed as more than a straightforward horror release: it is positioned as a self-aware response to the genre's past, made by a director with personal experience of the issues it raises around gender, sexuality and fear.