2026’s Next Great Horror Slasher Turns the Last Thing You’d Expect Into a Killer

If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that horror creators are going to have fun with the genre, whether the project is widely welcomed or not. Particularly, writer and director Jane Schoenbrun, who burst onto the scene with 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, before dazzling audiences at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival with their acclaimed follow-up, I Saw the TV Glow. Now, after yet another mystifying uphill battle, as they tell Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, for that coveted green light, we’re returning to Schoenbrun’s whimsical world with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) and Hannah Einbinder (Hacks).

Influenced by ‘80s movies like Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, Schoenbrun’s latest puts an irreverent spin on a genre that often amasses cult followings. In the movie, Einbinder plays a young filmmaker, Kris, who’s been given the task of rebooting the Camp Miasma slasher franchise for a diminishing fandom after years of sloppy sequels. While researching for the project, Kris connects with the original film’s “final girl,” Billy (Anderson), a reclusive actress living on the campsite where the movies were filmed. Together, the two experience a sizzling connection of desire and delirium, leading to a blood-soaked awakening for Kris. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma also stars Zach Cherry as Will, Dylan Baker as Jeffrey, Jasmin Savoy Brown as Mari, Patrick Fischler as Rudolph, and reunites Schoenbrun with TV Glow’s Jack Haven as Little Death.

Check out the full conversation with Schoenbrun in the video above, with a transcript provided below, where they discuss how MUBI stepped in to help make this ambitious story into an on-screen reality, and the creatives around them who helped elevate their vision. Plus, find out how they crafted the final design for Little Death, and which scene Schoenbrun was “bummed” didn’t make it into the final cut.

Jane Schoenbrun Says Queer Liberation Isn’t a Hot Selling Point in Hollywood

“It’s funny, it’s sexy. It’s a good time at the movies, but it’s not getting easier.”

Image via MUBI

PERRI NEMIROFF: I want to keep the train going from when we last spoke at Sundance for [I Saw the] TV Glow. We were talking about the experience of going from first narrative feature to second, and now I want to keep on going. When I asked you about that, you said something to the effect of, it was less about waiting for the green light and more about finding what you need to say as an artist, but then you also added, “figuring out how to be a spy with the gatekeepers who hold the power to get cool shit made.” Because you’re making even more cool shit now, can you tell me a little bit about the things that you have learned while spying on the gatekeepers to ensure that we could keep getting stories like this?

JANE SCHOENBRUN: Tricking people into letting me make my movies. You know, I wish I could say it gets easier, but this is a hard movie to convince people to make. I feel like it was really down to the wire a bit. I was like, “I wrote this script. I know this is the next one I want to make. I actually don’t know if I’m going to get to,” or “I’m going to get to, but it’s going to be like out in the woods with $100 again.” But thankfully, MUBI came along and really understood it and supported the film, and have been really great partners.

But I don’t know, maybe my new thinking about it is, like, it’s not up to me so much. The bind is that I know if I’m not being truthful, I know if I’m not following my own artistic progression towards the goal of being, not more commercial or more digestible or watered down as I grow as an artist, but more of myself, like, that’s the only goal. I’d rather not make something than diverge from that path.

With this movie, yeah, I was surprised that it was so hard because I do think it’s one of the more commercial things I’ve made. It’s fun. It’s funny, it’s sexy. It’s a good time at the movies, but it’s not getting easier. It’s getting harder for queer people to make honest stories about our lives, and especially if those stories aren’t, like, trauma porn. If they’re coming from a liberated perspective, which is not the perspective that Hollywood usually makes movies from — queer liberation — yeah, there are a lot of obstacles in your road to getting $10 million to do some crazy shit.

Jane Schoenbrun Says Collaboration Elevated Every Frame of ‘Camp Miasma’

“It’s just a constant pursuit of looking for joy and play.”

I know that this story was somewhat inspired by your personal experience. You worked on this script. I imagine it feels like your baby to a degree, but I love the fact that when you write something and then you share it with your cast and crew, it could become even more powerful in ways that you weren’t expecting. Can you tell me a few things that some of your cast and crew did with your writing that had that material far exceed your expectations in the finished film?

SCHOENBRUN: Oh, there’s just so, so, so, so much, and that’s what I’m looking for. When I write, I honestly just think of it as giving me and my collaborators lots of little potential gifts to trade in and get on various days on set, or in the sound design or in the edit. It’s like, if you’re not present and having fun, if you’re just kind of making something to spec, you’re going to feel that in the energy of the movie. And so it’s just a constant pursuit of looking for joy and play, and a lot of rigorous planning, obviously, as well.

A huge one was that opening credits scene with all of the memorabilia. I basically hosted a pop-up writers’ room with all of my closest collaborators. We just locked the door and didn’t let anyone knock for a morning, and we beated out that scene. We were brainstorming, like, fake taglines for each sequel and just coming up with the details that make that so fun to watch. That takes a village. There are just so many people who got to have their own joyful, creative process within this larger one.

Like my production designer, Brandon [Tonner-Connolly], and I. I think he learned on TV Glow that I love it when he surprises me with something really cute. A few of my faves that he brought, that were complete surprises, literally, until I arrived on set the day we shot, were the candy chandelier that you see at the end of the movie. Like, that’s his sense of humor, not mine. I was just like, “We’ve got to film that.” So much of those things.

Even my longtime assistant director, Willy [McGee], came over to me and was like, “I think I see something cool. What if you stood in front of the camera like this, in front of this glass, matte-painted backdrop, and then it creates this weird illusion?” And I was like, “Let’s do it,” because it was cool. I’ve learned to surround myself with people who can elevate the work, and who understand my voice enough to add their own to it.

Jane Schoenbrun Breaks Down Little Death’s Unique Design

They call it “unexplainable in a good way.”

Image via MUBI

You’re working with the best team here because all that stuff is exceptional in the film, and so is the design of Little Death. I love asking about how those types of things evolve from the beginning to the end of the process, so what would you say is the biggest difference between how you initially pictured that character looking when you first started writing and the finished design that we all see in the film?

SCHOENBRUN: I mean, it’s pretty close, to be honest with you. I guess one thing that came in through collaboration with Kendra [Terpenning], our costume designer, was the helmet. Once I knew that it was like that vent that we all see on the ceiling all the time, but don’t really think about, I could just see it perfectly, you know? It was just like, “Just take that vent and put it on top of somebody.” So when I saw it, I was like, “Yes. That is the thing that I saw in my brain.”

The outfit, the plastic wrap, that was not the original idea. We went back and forth a lot on, like, what would this guy wear? There are so many things that you’ve seen, and so many, like, not even slasher movies from the ‘80s, but the movies that we make now with slasher villains, kind of stock slasher villains. Like, I feel like Widow’s Bay had one, which I like that show, but everyone just kind of wears logger uniform. There were so many things that we thought of that were the obvious one, and then something about the plastic wrap just felt unexplainable in a good way.

Jane Schoenbrun Reveals They Were “Bummed” This ‘Camp Miasma’ Scene Got Cut

Plus, find out how that oner came together after “200 hours” of collaboration.

Image via MUBI

I’ll wrap with this question, because I’m a cliché film nerd and I absolutely love a good oner, and you have an epic one in your movie. Going into filming that, which particular part of it did you and the team think would be the most challenging to pull off, and ultimately, was it, or did something else catch you by surprise?

SCHOENBRUN: There were so many challenging parts of filming that. We spent probably, like, a combined 200 hours in inter-departmental prep meetings so costumes could talk to special effects, could talk to stunts, could talk to VFX, could talk to production design. It was just so much planning to pull that off. The second half of it, when Jack [Haven]’s got the Snorricam strapped to them — that’s like a 60-pound rig, and they are dancing with it — was probably the most challenging thing to pull off. It was one of these moments where it’s like fourth quarter, clock’s ticking down, we have clearly only one more in the tank, and it’s just perfect. That’s the best feeling in the world. We are jumping up and down and cheering when we get it, and it’s perfect. And a lot of that is Jack. Jack is the cinematographer, or at least the camera op for that scene, quite literally.

Another part that was unexpectedly hard: rolling a fake severed head. The one gag that we weren’t able to pull off that I’m really bummed about was we had the severed head on a stick, and we’re rolling it. The idea was the character’s got a mohawk, and that it would roll, and then it would kind of, like, Teflon — it would reach the mohawk, and then it would kind of go boing, boing, boing, and roll back, like it can’t quite forward the mohawk. But whoever was holding that stick and rolling it couldn’t quite get it. It’s like puppetry. I didn’t quite realize there would be literally puppetry. But so much shit like that. Also, we shot in May and June for a lot of that stuff, and you had six hours of true night at that time of year in Vancouver, and so it was really, from sundown at 10:00 p.m. to sun-up at 4:30 in the morning, it’s like all you can eat, go quick.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma debuts in theaters on August 7.

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Release Date

August 6, 2026

Runtime

112 minutes

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Director

Jane Schoenbrun

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Writers

Jane Schoenbrun

Producers

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Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner

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