Why Jane Schoenbrun Wanted to Make a Queer-Focused Slasher Film

After We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow, fans of boundary-pushing horror can’t wait to see what Jane Schoenbrun does next. Excitement over Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma intensified when the cast (Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson, and Jack Haven) was revealed and then a first teaser arrived. The film is premiering at Cannes ahead of its August 7 theatrical release, and Schoenbrun recently talked about why they wanted to make a slasher movie next. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Schoenbrun explained they’ve been a slasher fan since childhood, obsessing over franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. That fascination became intertwined with Schoenbrun’s experiences and emotions as a trans and nonbinary artist who makes horror films. “This image of the trans monster kept coming up, whether that be Norman Bates or Buffalo Bill or Frankenstein as a constructed body, and there was this lineage of trans people having really complicated feelings about those movies,” Schoenbrun told THR. “In one sense, those are the places where they saw representations that felt familiar or comforting in some way to their own experiences—but also, those movies a