The Slasher That Wowed Cannes Opens This Week — and It Has a Perfect Score

There is a very short list of horror films that have ever walked away from Cannes with a six-minute standing ovation. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, the new film from director Jane Schoenbrun, is now on that list. It opens in theaters this Friday, August 7, via Mubi — and it arrives with something even more striking: a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from 66 critics.

That is not a typo.

What Is Camp Miasma?

Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow, We're All Going to the World's Fair) has built one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary horror by finding the terrifying space where identity, desire, and genre cinema blur together. Camp Miasma is their swingiest pitch yet.

The setup is a love letter to slasher history: a young queer filmmaker named Kris (Hannah Einbinder, HBO's Hacks) is hired to revive the Camp Miasma franchise — a beloved horror series that has been running on fumes for years. To get the sequel right, Kris becomes obsessed with the idea of casting the original film's reclusive final girl, a now-mysterious actress named Billy (Gillian Anderson, in what critics are calling the performance of her career). When the two women finally meet, something shifts. The professional becomes personal, and the personal becomes dangerous. As Schoenbrun's official synopsis puts it, they "fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium."

Think less Scream and more David Cronenberg at a summer camp, filtered through the lens of someone who grew up rewinding the same horror tape until it broke.

The Cannes Moment

The film opened the Un Certain Regard section at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on May 13 — a prestigious berth that put it alongside the festival's most watched new voices. The reception was loud. Camp Miasma won the Queer Palm, Cannes' annual prize honoring LGBTQ+ cinema, and generated the kind of word-of-mouth that turns a midnight-circuit curio into a genuine cultural event.

Critical response since the festival has been nearly unanimous. The RT consensus reads: "A bloody valentine to slasher horror that celebrates personal self-discovery as much as it does the possibilities of cinema, combining killer style with a big, still-beating heart."

Richard Brody of The New Yorker placed it in the same conversation as Wes Anderson's Asteroid City and Greta Gerwig's Barbie as a film that rewires its genre from the inside. Sight & Sound called it "a whole new world of visual pleasure and cinematic possibility." One reviewer gave it an A+ and called it "a brilliantly subversive satire." Another called it "a strange, funny and emotionally perceptive slasher romance that loves the genre enough to recognise both its damage and its possibilities."

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson

The film lives or dies on the chemistry between its two leads, and by all accounts it lives very loudly. Einbinder, best known for playing the sardonic Ava on Hacks, brings a wound-up, almost manic energy to Kris — a filmmaker whose obsession with the Miasma franchise reads as something deeper than fandom. Anderson plays Billy with a Southern accent and the kind of quiet menace that suggests layers Kris can't stop pulling back. Their dynamic is, as more than one critic has noted, as lesbian-coded as cinema gets, and the film does not blink about it.

The supporting cast is packed: Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, Eva Victor, Zach Cherry, Sarah Sherman, Jasmin Savoy Brown (Scream), Quintessa Swindell, and Kevin McDonald all appear. Music is by Alex G, whose eerie indie rock has appeared in films like I Saw the TV Glow — making this something of a reunion.

Schoenbrun's "Sleepover Classic"

Schoenbrun has described Camp Miasma as their "best attempt at the 'sleepover classic': an insane yet cozy midnight odyssey that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store." It is an '80s slasher spoof, a psychosexual drama, a genre deconstruction, and, depending on who you ask, one of the best horror films made in years — all at the same time.

The film was produced by Plan B Entertainment (the same company behind Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave), shot by cinematographer Eric Yue, and edited by Graham Mason. Mubi — the streaming platform increasingly synonymous with adventurous genre cinema — is handling the theatrical release.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens in select theaters and on Mubi this Friday, August 7.

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