Jane Schoenbrun takes seriously what people find in horror, from a way to understand their bodies to someone who shares their tastes. We rate the tenderness and the growing willingness to be funny, though the conversations sometimes need firmer cutting.
Fi1m perspective
A young filmmaker and an older actress care about a fictional horror franchise, and Jane Schoenbrun lets that matter. In Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026), their attachment is funny without becoming evidence that either woman needs to grow up. It is a warm, rewarding horror romance, and it makes a persuasive case for a director who takes the audience's peculiar enthusiasms seriously.
The screens were there from the start. A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018) assembled YouTube videos about Slender Man into a found-footage documentary. We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) used internet aesthetics to explore dysphoria and bodily transformation. I Saw the TV Glow (2024) made gender transition and media obsession central to its story. Across these films, Schoenbrun keeps returning to people using what they watch to approach feelings they cannot easily name.
The move from those intimate, experimental beginnings towards more polished, playful genre films has not meant abandoning those concerns. In Camp Miasma, the gore, sexual curiosity and absurdity can share a story without anyone having to explain why they deserve to be there. Schoenbrun's screenplay allows tastes that its characters might struggle to defend. Being silly gives the romance room to develop without turning it into a lesson in self-acceptance.
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson keep Camp Miasma's obsession with films personal. We were moved by the way the women's devotion to a fictional franchise offers them the possibility of company. The references matter, but Schoenbrun avoids making recognition of another horror film the only pleasure available; there is room for people who care more about the women than about their viewing history.
The weakness is Schoenbrun's reluctance to leave an interesting thought alone. Graham Mason's editing in Camp Miasma lets the second half wander, and discussions continue after the performers have made the point. The romance survives, but some of those conversations could be shorter without losing anything the characters need to say. Start here for Einbinder and Anderson; a taste for lengthy discussions about horror will also help.
Biography
Jane Schoenbrun is an American filmmaker. They directed and wrote the features We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021), I Saw the TV Glow (2024) and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026).
Schoenbrun was born on 5 February 1987 in Queens, New York, and graduated from Boston University's film programme in 2009. Their earlier work includes the documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018), credited as Dan Schoenbrun.
