Relentless Regurgitation and Creativity Carnage through the eyes of Schoenbrun’s Camp Miasma.
By Bethany Lockhart
Recently I watched Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026), which centres on Kris, an emerging director (played by Hannah Einbinder), keen to reboot the problematic 80s horror franchise “Camp Miasma”. What particularly caught my eye was the demands of Hollywood executives, begging Kris to ‘woke-wash’ her prequel as a queer woman. This need to ‘redeem’ poorly aged movies through recycled reboots got me thinking about our own cinema economy in this present moment.
The film opens with a plethora of Camp Miasma merchandise as it descends from a 90s sensation to a relentless joke of recycled slop. It allows the audience to think about our own horror franchises, reflecting Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Scream, all of which have been rebooted and ‘reimagined’ through the years. Camp Miasma becomes a microcosm of Hollywood’s nostalgia addiction, with every franchise inevitably becoming a Frankenstein of adaptation. It appears that nostalgia franchises are the only way forward for mainstream cinema with constant remakes, as Catherine Shoard notes, “Hollywood, it appears, is stuck on repeat, sucked with an ever-more deafening gurgle into a death cycle of creative bankruptcy desperately presented as comfort food.” [1] If you are anything like me, recycled comfort food has become sickening, with cinema releases becoming relentless and boring.
Camp Miasma highlights the inauthenticity of the mainstream industry as protagonist Kris, a queer filmmaker hired by the studio to exploit her identity in an attempt to make the franchise more appealing and marketable. Schoenbrun describes Camp Miasma as “trying to make something personal in a commercial capitalist hellscape system” [2]. It echoes Disney’s recent controversies with their unnecessary live-action remakes.
Rachel Zegler’s casting as “Snow White” as a Latina woman caused a point of contention due to her Colombian and Polish descent. A budget of $270 million and poor reception marked the reboot as one of 2025’s largest flops, with a loss of $170 million. Two years prior, similar criticism emerged with the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel in the live-action The Little Mermaid; an uproar of #NotMyAriel circulated on social media over Disney’s ‘race-swapping’ in an attempt to engage audiences, when the simple fact is that art (or cinema in this case) cannot please everyone.
This idea of ‘Woke Washing’ and Franchise Fatigue intersects with the endurance of Marvel franchises. The Marvels, released in 2023, focuses on women (as implied by the title), but was still criticised by conservative critics for being ‘too woke’, resulting in one of Marvel’s lowest-grossing releases. The recent Captain America: Brave New World with Anthony Mackie’s black Captain America also faced major criticism from those who favoured Steve Rogers, preferring a blonde-haired, blue-eyed hunk to represent America in the MCU.
Stephen Follows notes that there isn’t a consistent correlation between progressive releases and box office failures, as Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) and Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) succeeded. “Woke-ification” of cinema is thus an oversimplification of the current cinema crisis, as audiences reject poorly made films regardless of politics [3]. Perhaps we are exhausted by seeing the same formulaic slop plague our screens, wrapped up and presented as something shiny and new through inauthentic diversity and hollow representation. Why has diversity become acceptable as a form of marketing?
Ultimately, the ending of Camp Miasma, with Kris and Billy watching the original tape of the franchise, suggests that creativity can prevail despite the machine. It suggests that while ‘woke-washing’ and nostalgia bait are dominating the big screen, authentic and personal storytelling is the real draw of cinema. It causes me to question: are we shifting towards originality once more?
Despite my franchise fatigue, 2026 has brought us some fresh stories such as Curry Barker’s horror Obsession, which grossed roughly $519 million worldwide despite a production budget of under $1 million, defying industry norms with ticket sales increasing in its second week of release. Alongside this, the film was raved about online, creating cultural resonance.
Further, Focus Features released Obsession in 2,000 theatres without relying on IMAX formats and other forms of thrill-seeking cinema. It relied on communal scares, like classic cinema that we know and love. Another release worth noting is Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, starring Timothee Chalamet, which became A24’s highest-grossing domestic film, breaking the record that was held by Everything Everywhere All at Once. It offered a character-driven story with charisma and a distinctive, authentic directorial voice that franchises and reboots lack. Ping-pong became an exploration of desire and ambition as the protagonist Marty climbs the social ladder to achieve his dream of being the best. Safdie’s idiosyncratic blend of drama, sports and comedy transformed the cinema into a cultural moment, with audiences wanting original stories that resonate rather than continuing meaningless franchises.
I’m not saying that franchises should be completely abandoned, as nostalgia will have an everlasting presence in cinema, but we should rebalance the scale of originality and adaptation. The death of the original screenplay is not inevitable; it’s a choice made by studio executives, wanting predetermined audiences and simply cash in their hands. We need new perspectives and stories that nurture creativity rather than marginalise. Jane Schoenbrun explores the tension this article has discussed in their satire: nostalgia as a commodity, diversity as marketing and originality as an afterthought. Camp Miasma allowed me to conclude that perhaps creativity is not dying but slowly adapting. Trying to find a way to exist in the machine of “reduce, reuse, recycle”.
References
[2] https://www.filmink.com.au/jane-schoenbrun-on-slashers-and-slipping-bombs-into-culture-with-teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma/ [3] https://stephenfollows.com/p/is-go-woke-go-broke-true-for-movies
