Camp Miasma Gets a Summer Tour Before August Release

Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is heading to summer camp early. The Cannes-praised horror-comedy — starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in what critics are calling a genuinely singular piece of cinema — will embark on a “Camp Is in Session” festival tour throughout June and July before its wide theatrical release on Friday, August 7.

The tour, announced exclusively by IndieWire, will hit a curated run of film festivals and special venues chosen to match the film’s summer camp spirit. Confirmed stops include NewFest, the Provincetown Film Festival, and Fantasia, with the tour kicking off June 27 at Frameline50 — the 50th San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival. It’s a fitting launchpad for a film that has already resonated deeply with queer audiences since its Cannes debut.

The premise is as irresistible as the title. Einbinder plays Kris, a critically acclaimed indie director who gets tapped by a studio to resurrect the Camp Miasma slasher franchise — the kind of schlocky, beloved horror series that shaped a generation of genre fans. To prepare, she seeks out Billie, the franchise’s original star, now a reclusive figure living off the grid. Billie is played by Gillian Anderson, and the official synopsis promises the two women fall into “a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.”

What Critics Are Saying After Cannes

The film arrived at Cannes with serious buzz and left with even more. Reviewers have been emphatic: this is Schoenbrun operating at a new level. IGN’s Cannes review called it “electrifying, erotic, and playfully yet profoundly emotional,” and described it as Schoenbrun’s “most unabashedly unique film to date” — high praise from a filmmaker whose previous two features, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, already earned devoted cult followings.

What’s surprised critics most is how funny it is. Schoenbrun has always had a sharp, underappreciated wit, but Camp Miasma apparently leans into it harder than anything they’ve made before — opening with a rapid-fire montage of headlines chronicling a horror franchise’s rise and fall that reviewers describe as “side-splittingly great.” Einbinder, best known for Hacks, brings her comedic timing to bear while also delivering something more vulnerable underneath. The result, per IGN, is a performance where “the film’s more tender moments work just as well as the playfully teasing ones.”

IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio framed the film’s emotional core with precision, writing that it’s “a statement about what happens after gender dysphoria’s annihilation — a reflection on the sexual unease experienced once you’ve finally fit into your body but perhaps don’t know what to do with it.” It’s heady stuff, but reviewers are clear that Schoenbrun never lets the cerebral overtake the visceral. “For all the ways that so much of modern cinema can feel rather tame in how it engages with such questions,” IGN wrote, “Schoenbrun fearlessly kicks down the door of any boring prudishness.”

Comparisons to David Lynch and David Cronenberg’s Crash have come up in early reviews, though critics are equally insistent that this is something wholly its own — bolstered by a score from Alex G and cinematography by Eric Yue that keeps the film’s increasingly unhinged tonal shifts feeling grounded and intentional.

A MUBI Release With a Cult Already Forming

The film is being released through MUBI, the arthouse streaming and theatrical platform that has become a home for exactly this kind of daring, director-driven work. That distribution context matters: Camp Miasma isn’t trying to be a mainstream summer blockbuster. It’s positioning itself as the film for the cinephiles, the queer horror fans, the people who wore out their I Saw the TV Glow Blu-rays.

The “Camp Is in Session” tour is smart programming for that audience — meeting them at the festivals and rep screenings where they already live before the August 7 wide release brings it to everyone else.

IGN’s review put it plainly: “It’s a film that’s very much not going to be for everyone, but for those that are able to get on the same wavelength, it’s truly exhilarating.”

Consider the wavelength set.