Jane Schoenbrun's slasher-comedy, starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, is the summer's indie hit and a preview of the FilmColumbia festival's 26th edition this October.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens at the Crandell Theatre this Friday, the new film from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, who spent formative years in Chatham and returns this October as FilmColumbia's 2026 festival honoree.
The premise is a knowing spin on slasher-franchise mechanics: an up-and-coming director, played by Hannah Einbinder ("Hacks"), is hired to make a modern sequel to a beloved horror franchise and becomes fixated on casting its original "final girl," whom she discovers still living, decades later, in the abandoned sleepaway camp where the first film was shot. Gillian Anderson plays that original star, delivering what early reviews describe as a decadent, knockout performance built on neurotic isolation, with Einbinder bringing deadpan wit and mounting obsession to the director chasing her down.
Schoenbrun's last feature, I Saw the TV Glow, premiered at Sundance in 2024 became one of the breakout films of that year's festival circuit—a surreal coming-of-age horror film about two teenagers whose identities fuse with a cult television show. That film followed Schoenbrun's 2021 debut We're All Going to the World's Fair, about a teenager who falls into an online horror role-play challenge. Both films draw on a childhood steeped in 1990s genre television—"Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Are You Afraid of the Dark?," "The X-Files"—filtered through what Schoenbrun has called the experience of being "drained of the possibility of fiction, trapped in the identity of normative reality."
Camp Miasma marks a tonal shift toward comedy without abandoning the genre fluency that's defined Schoenbrun's work. Speaking to NPR recently, Schoenbrun described watching audiences realize the film's intentions in real time: "I could see people's eyes light up as they realized that I was actually trying to have a good time at the movies. It's very much a comedy. It's self-effacing. It's romantic. It's sexy. It's funny. And while it does go to some challenging and serious places, it wants to wine and dine you a little bit before it does that." The film knowingly nods to touchstones ranging from Sunset Boulevard and Portrait of a Lady on Fire to the best and worst of 1980s horror.
FilmColumbia, now in its 26th year, runs October 16–25 and is programmed annually by film historian Peter Biskind and former MoMA senior film curator Laurence Kardish, with Millay Arts co-director Calliope Nicholas serving as festival director.
Crandell Theatre, 48 Main Street, Chatham, NY. Showtimes and tickets at crandelltheatre.org.
