Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma”, is presented as a comic, bloody and reflective slasher-romance rather than a conventional horror film. The director says it explores sexual awakening and the relief and uncertainty they experienced after transitioning, continuing the personal themes of their earlier films while adopting a lighter, campier tone.

The film follows Kris, an ambitious independent filmmaker played by Hannah Einbinder, as she seeks to make an instalment in the fictional “Camp Miasma” slasher series and encounters its reclusive original star, played by Gillian Anderson. Schoenbrun describes the story as involving a deliberately absurd, sexually charged dinner scene and a major bloodbath set to Counting Crows, choices intended to combine fear, humour, joy and tenderness.