![‘Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma’: Gillian Anderson & Hannah Einbinder Talk KFC Seduction, Slasher Obsession & ‘The X-Files’ Future [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/06091022/CampMiasma_Still_6_%C2%A9MUBI.jpg "‘Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma’: Gillian Anderson & Hannah Einbinder Talk KFC Seduction, Slasher Obsession & ‘The X-Files’ Future [Interview]")
Some movies resist an easy elevator pitch, and then there is “Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma.” It is a slasher movie, a psychosexual love story, a therapy session, a queer awakening and, occasionally, an extremely persuasive commercial for fried chicken.
Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw The TV Glow”), the film follows Kris (Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”), a filmmaker hired to resurrect the faded Camp Miasma horror franchise after years of increasingly lousy sequels. Her mission leads her to Billy (Gillian Anderson, “The X-Files”), the reclusive star and original final girl of the first movie. Once the two meet at the abandoned camp where it was filmed, professional curiosity quickly turns into something much stranger, more intimate and considerably bloodier.
Trying to explain all of that to friends has apparently proven difficult for the film’s stars, too.
“I’ve just been describing it as freaking awesome,” Einbinder told The Playlist. “I just love keeping it so ambiguous because it does defy genre categorization. If anything, I talk about the themes explored in the film, but not necessarily the plot.”
Anderson has mostly stopped trying.
“I usually give up, or I don’t even try,” she laughed. “It’s a hard one to win somebody over with. You kind of have to see it to get it. Or even just see the trailer.”
One scene that may be slightly easier to explain, although not necessarily with a straight face, involves Billy turning a meal of KFC and dipping sauces into a full seduction. Schoenbrun films the preparation and consumption of the chicken with the kind of attention normally reserved for silk sheets and candlelight. According to Anderson, nearly every glob of sauce was carefully planned.
“So much of that was Jane’s direction,” she explained. “They had such a clear idea of how it would play out. Even when Billy comes and stands and asks whether Kris likes dipping sauce, it was a very particular pitch and rhythm of that question that Jane wanted. The close-ups that we did of the chicken in the dipping sauce, and how much sauce ended up on it, it was all very orchestrated.”
![‘Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma’: Gillian Anderson & Hannah Einbinder Talk KFC Seduction, Slasher Obsession & ‘The X-Files’ Future [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/06091005/CampMiasma_BTS_2_%C2%A9MUBI-1024x683.jpg)
Asked whether there was such a thing as too much dipping sauce, Anderson did not hesitate: “There’s no such thing as too much sauce.”
It is a ridiculous scene, but neither Anderson nor Einbinder plays it as a joke. That is the slippery frequency Schoenbrun works on throughout the film, where something can be funny, uncomfortable, erotic and genuinely sad without politely waiting for one emotion to leave before the next walks in.
Einbinder said her job was largely to ignore the genre gymnastics and stay focused on Kris.
“My approach was just to play the reality, to stay in the character and maintain my understanding of how she was feeling and what she wanted,” she said. “When there is something humorous, as a comedic actor or a comedian, you understand the rhythm and what that has to be. It’s just innate. I also know Jane and their sensibility comedically, so I know which kind of flavor to inhabit.”
For Anderson, the trick was preserving Billy’s innocence even when the character’s behavior becomes intensely intimate.
![‘Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma’: Gillian Anderson & Hannah Einbinder Talk KFC Seduction, Slasher Obsession & ‘The X-Files’ Future [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/06091008/CampMiasma_BTS_1_%C2%A9MUBI-1-1024x683.jpg)
“It was important that any erotic nature that might have been coming from Billy was innocent,” Anderson said. “She wasn’t purposely trying to seduce. That was an interesting challenge.”
Behind the scenes, Einbinder and Schoenbrun spent considerable time discussing the film’s ideas about sexuality, dissociation and identity. Those conversations were not simply technical discussions about how to play individual scenes. They became a way for Einbinder to examine where Kris’ experiences overlapped with her own.
“That was really helpful for me to understand how much of the subject matter of the film was true for me,” she said. “I had kind of a parallel experience alongside Kris relative to that stuff. It’s a credit to Jane as a filmmaker and as someone who wants to explore something sensitive and explores it sensitively.”
The conversation eventually moved from one fictional horror mythology to another that fans have spent decades dissecting, “The X-Files.” Asked about Ryan Coogler’s developing take on “The X-Files” and whether Mulder and Scully should have a place in it, Anderson, who iconically played Dana Scully in the original series, suggested that their involvement would make sense and that an announcement may be only a matter of time.
“It makes sense that [Mulder and Scully] are there for the sake of the fans,” Anderson said. “I’m not sure yet what that looks like, but I do understand why it would make sense, and it would honor what Ryan [Coogler] is doing.”
Watch the full interview with Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder below. “Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma” opens in theaters on August 7.
Mike DeAngelo is a film writer, podcaster, and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, and beyond. He is the host of The Playlist's podcasts The Discourse and Bingeworthy.
