Jane Schoenbrun premieres slasher at Tribeca Festival

A feverishly original slasher film called “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” premiered at the Tribeca Festival this week, instantly becoming the horror nerd’s most-talked-about midnight movie since “Terrifier 2.”

The 90-minute feature is the second full-length project from Jane Schoenbrun, the Brooklyn-based writer-director whose 2022 debut “I Saw the TV Glow” redefined coming-of-age cinema by blending queerness, nostalgia and supernatural dread. Schoenbrun shot Camp Miasma in 16 mm on an ultra-low budget, then edited it overnight between festival deadlines to keep costs under $120,000. Critics who caught the midnight screening described it as “a VHS cassette left too long in a VCR,” praising its raw grain, sudden zooms and synth score that sounds like a Casio keyboard melting in a microwave.

Camp Miasma arrived at Tribeca just as Gen Z horror appetite is exploding: TikTok horror trends, the “elevated slasher” wave and the box-office dominance of “Talk to Me” have created a glut of slick studio slashers that feel safe and sanitized. Schoenbrun’s film deliberately rejects that polish, leaning instead on the anarchic spirit of 1980s grindhouse and the DIY ethics of early YouTube horror. The plot—loosely based on Schoenbrun’s own adolescent crushes and campfire ghost stories—follows a group of counselors at a decaying summer camp who realize they’re being stalked by a killer who weaponizes their own sexual fantasies. Early reactions from critics call it “the first truly queer slasher” and cite its unflinching portrayal of teenage desire as a force as lethal as the knife.

Schoenbrun’s next move is already in motion: a limited theatrical rollout in five microcinemas across Brooklyn, Austin and Portland this fall, followed by a week-long residency at New York’s Metrograph where she’ll host post-screening séances with the audience. If Camp Miasma gains traction, it could become the flagship for a new wave of micro-budget horror that treats the genre less as a product and more as a communal ritual. Either way, the film’s existence proves that the best horror isn’t made in boardrooms—it’s made in basements, late at night, with a borrowed camera and a stack of VHS tapes.