It’s quite the challenge to try to explain what type of genres filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun has been exploring with their movies. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair appeared to be a story about someone getting wrapped up in online mythology, though it served as a metaphor for gender dysphoria, parasocial relationships, and someone who blurs the lines between the imagination and reality. I Saw the TV Glow presented as a story about outcasts bonding over shared interests and a resulting disappearance, though it was also about destroying a previous identity to create a new one you were empowered by and finding comfort and community in fandoms. In one sense, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is about its title and its title alone, but in another sense, it’s about a billion other things. Schoenbrun is overflowing with things they want to say, with the only real drawback of Camp Miasma being how easy it is for the audience to get lost inside the metaphors.

Within the movie, Camp Miasma starts as a straightforward slasher and, over the course of decades and a dozen installments, becomes an embarrassing shell of what it used to be. For all intents and purposes, just pretend it’s actually Friday the 13th. Hot young indie filmmaker Allie (Hannah Einbinder) is tasked with putting a new spin on the concept for a reboot, but as a lifelong fan, she only wants to do so after meeting Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original movie who essentially vanished from Hollywood. With Billy having purchased and moved into the camp that served as the original movie’s filming location, what starts as a meeting between creatives turns into a revelatory investigation into their own identities, shining a light on the impact of art on oneself and the real-world horrors behind seemingly superficial scares.

If that sounds like a lot, well, it is. Speaking of how difficult it is to try to define Schoenbrun’s work, Teenage Sex and Death is undeniably a horror movie while also being the furthest thing from it. Schoenbrun uses the pastiche of ’80s slashers and how seemingly rudimentary they are as a backdrop to tell a much more thought-provoking story that just so happens to overlap with the world of horror. Schoenbrun clearly loves horror movies, which means they also know their limitations. As confirmed by one exchange, Allie breaks down the subversive techniques Camp Miasma used to serve as a trans and queer allegory, while Billy dismisses any deeper meaning and reveals how the franchise is only about “flesh and fluids.” The same exact thing can be said about Schoenbrun’s movie: it’s both only about exactly what we’re seeing, but also about everything you project onto it.

This is the theme of the movie that hit me the hardest, in that interpretations of art are entirely subjective. Yes, even the most lowbrow horror movie can be about so many more complex and weighted issues, while high-brow A24 movies require zero thought to appreciate for what they are. When it comes to the more outright horrifying elements of Teenage Sex and Death, Schoenbrun finds just the right balance of practical effects and exaggerated surrealism, with decapitations resulting in literal geysers of gore. One specific sequence in the middle of the movie, in which the Camp Miasma killer (known as “Little Death”) tears through counselors to an entirely unexpected ’90s pop song, is more inventive and effective than nearly any other sequence in a horror movie this year.

On a deeper level, though, Schoenbrun’s movie reminds us of how much more to life there is than consuming and decoding art merely as a collection of trivia and anecdotes about how those movies were brought to life. Early on in the movie, Allie is rhetorically asked about who starred in Sleepaway Camp as Angela, as her manager (Sarah Sherman) tries to confirm how little anyone remembers these actors, only for Allie to rattle off how it was first Felissa Rose and then Pamela Springsteen. As someone whose life has revolved around remembering pointless details about horror movies, I felt especially embarrassed to see my own identity reflected in Allie at that point.

Making the pointlessness of trivia – usually a badge of fandom for anyone who can remember the most minute of details about their “favorite” films – feel all the more irrelevant is how Allie keeps explaining to Billy how there was a certain look in Billy’s eyes in the original Camp Miasma that she wanted to recapture for a reboot. No matter how many times Billy tells her she has interpreted that sequence incorrectly, Allie can’t quite let it go. Once Billy reveals the more traumatic backstory for that look, it can finally dawn on Allie that Camp Miasma isn’t just a bloody, goofy slasher, but it’s also the entire source of one individual’s trauma. The movie itself cites Shelley Duvall at one point and, while horror fans might recall the horrendous emotional trauma the actor endured while making Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining as our own expression of knowledge, we lose touch with the fact that a real person went through real trauma that fundamentally impacted them forever.

Even though this all sounds very, very heavy, Teenage Sex and Death is easily Schoenbrun’s most lighthearted affair. While there are plenty of moments that are so absurd and awkward that we can’t help but laugh, the script is also jam-packed with outright obvious and more subtle, satirical jokes. The humor only works because of how damn good Einbinder and Anderson are on their own, and even better when they’re bouncing off of each other. The entire movie is silly and sexy and bloody and thought-provoking and about everything and about nothing from start to finish. The drawback, though, is the overwhelming amount of, well, everything in this movie; don’t be surprised if you get lost in it.

Really, that’s the only thing that even somewhat holds the movie back from being a full-blown masterpiece. Everyone in the audience is going to relate to at least one component of the movie, though it will be just a select few who can relate to absolutely everything. Given Schoenbrun’s previous work, it’s difficult to know at times which sequences are meant to be literal and which are meant to be surrealist allegories. At one point, Allie herself tries to explain on a Zoom call what she wants her movie to be about, and she descends into an existential breakdown about the nature of art in general. It’s difficult to know – as an audience member – if we’re meant to take her at face value, or if this sequence is merely designed to illustrate the struggles of a creative trying to explain philosophical ideas to people who are in control of whether you get to share that message in the first place and how their financial contributions will impact what you want to say. If you completely understood every single thing this movie was trying to say and can completely relate to it, then congratulations on being much smarter than I am (it’s a low bar, but still, congrats!).

Even if Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma can get lost in its metaphors throughout its run time, I will always take a movie with too much to say over a movie with too little to say any goddamned day of the week. Even if only a fraction of what Schoenbrun is saying with the movie resonates with you, then it’s still more effective than most of the other horror and non-horror releases of 2026. No one is making movies quite like Schoenbrun these days, and I can’t wait to see what they make next.

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