The most interesting theatrical release this week isn't a wide-release platform play or a prestige acquisition sitting in limited markets. It's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun's third feature, which MUBI releases theatrically starting Friday, August 7.
The film premiered at Cannes earlier this year — I wrote about Schoenbrun's slot in the lineup back in April — but the theatrical release is a different story. MUBI betting on a Schoenbrun film that is, by any honest description, an erotic horror-comedy about sexual awakening and orgasm-as-ghost is either a sign of genuine institutional nerve or a very good read of their audience. Probably both.
What the Film Is Actually Doing
IndieWire's review frames the film as a statement about what comes after gender dysphoria's resolution — specifically, the sexual unease of finally inhabiting your body without knowing what to do with it. The formal conceit is clever: Hannah Einbinder plays a 29-year-old filmmaker hired to direct a "woke" reboot of a transphobic '80s slasher franchise called "Camp Miasma," and the assignment opens a portal to sexual awakening through the franchise's original final girl, played by Gillian Anderson. The villain is a ghost called Little Death — which is, yes, also a euphemism for orgasm, and Schoenbrun is absolutely aware of every layer they're stacking here.
What's notable is the formal shift. We're All Going to the World's Fair was deliberately hermetic; I Saw the TV Glow was wounding and interior. This one, per the review, is described as "pop-colored" and more accessible — which for Schoenbrun means something different than it would for most directors. Accessible here means the metaphors are still doing structural work, but the surface is brighter and the genre pleasures are more legible.
That's a real risk, actually. Schoenbrun's audience came for the difficulty. A film that's easier to enter might read as a retreat to some of them. The more interesting read is that it's an expansion — the same rigor applied to a register that doesn't usually get it.
MUBI's theatrical window will tell us something about whether the Schoenbrun audience travels to cinemas or stays home. Either way, this is the release worth tracking this week — not because it's the biggest, but because it's the one where the formal ambition and the distribution strategy are actually aligned.