Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder on Reclaiming the Final Girl
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. It's no surprise that horror films are often allegories for larger societal issues, like racism with Get Out (2017) or more recently male entitlement with Curry Barker's Obsession (2025). But rarely does the final girl, the trope of the last woman standing to confront the killer, get a redemption story of her own. That changes with Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma .
"I think just the genre ambiguity, the fact that it is not totally categorizable in one way," Hannah Einbinder told Newsweek about what drew her to the project. "The conceit of the film and the way that it uses horror slasher tropes to ultimately be something that is empowering is just cool. I hadn't seen anything like it."
In the film, Einbinder plays Kris, a director hired to make a new installment in a popular slasher franchise and determined to cast the final girl from the original movie, Billy Wilder ( Gillian Anderson ), reclaiming the narrative of a male-driven series through Billy's character. As Kris tries to convince Billy to do the film, the actress attempts to woo the director, and the two undergo a psychosexual exploration in what will almost certainly be the most unique film you see this year.
Anderson said the impact was apparent the moment she walked onto the set.
"It's one thing to read something on the page and to anticipate what the scene might be like to film," she said. "And then there's another thing, which is stepping onto a set that has been so perfectly production designed and created for the sole purpose of the viewing public, who you know every single square inch is going to be picked apart and discussed. There's a meta aspect of it that I don't even think I anticipated, even though I had read the script."
For Anderson, the film's ability to let all sorts of people feel seen is what thrills her about it, and she frames that as something bigger than a genre exercise.
"I feel like it speaks to so many different subsections of humanity, that if they were all to take ownership of it and embrace it and then agree that it belongs to everybody, that somehow just the process of doing that would eradicate some of the judgment and hating that takes place between the different subcategories," she said. "And so I see it as being very unifying and potentially leading to global compassion. It's not a small thing."
Horror has long told stories that reflect real-world problems, but for decades those stories were told by one type of person: men. In recent years, films like A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014), The Babadook (2014) and The Substance (2024) have handed the genre to filmmakers working from perspectives it rarely made room for. Camp Miasma is a thrilling addition to that shift. It is deeply referential to a genre Schoenbrun clearly loves while building a queer, female-led story on top of a structure horror fans already know by heart.
That combination of reverence and reinvention is what Einbinder said made the material feel like more than an exercise.
"Knowing that this is a personal subject matter to Jane and that a lot of their films, all their films, are very personal," she said, "I think stood out."
Anderson's Billy is a not-so-subtle descendant of Sunset Boulevard 's Norma Desmond, which turns out to be a fitting reference for a film looking to reshape the final girl. Desmond, like Billy, became an outcast in her industry for the offense of aging. Billy waited for a sequel worth making, and by the time one arrived, Hollywood had decided she was too old for it. Unlike Sunset Boulevard , Camp Miasma sends someone up the road who sees a woman with potential instead of a relic.
Einbinder pushed the comparison further, arguing that the older film's theatricality was a product of its era and that Schoenbrun replaces it with something closer to analysis. Where Billy gave audiences spectacle, she said, this film gives them a diagnosis, with Kris genuinely working to understand why Billy has "holed up in the cabin away from the world after the success of this initial film."
"There's a little bit more psychoanalysis happening in their dialogue," Einbinder said. "You do get more of this honest, modern reflection of what that is."
If anyone understands a role that threatens to define a career, it's Anderson, who has spent decades refusing to let Dana Scully from X-Files dictate her choices, from hunting down a serial killer in The Fall to her Emmy-winning turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Crown . Her fan base has gone along for the ride, and this film is going to excite a very particular corner of it. Anderson's relationship to that devotion is warmer than you might expect, and also stranger.
"So much of the work that I do outside of my work as an actor is taking ownership of that and addressing aspects of it in a way that feels like it's from an activist stance as well," she said. "I have a very intimate relationship with it, but at the same time I do sometimes feel as if they're [fans from X-Files ] talking about something that is over there. But I think that's healthy. That feels right to me, that I can laugh about it, and I can be flattered and honored and everything."
Given that so much of Camp Miasma is about the final girl, the question had to be asked: Who was their all-time favorite? Anderson turned to Einbinder, who did not hesitate.
"I have to say that my scream queen final girl is Carrie ," Einbinder said, referring to Brian De Palma's 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek and adapted from Stephen King's debut novel.
It makes sense for this film. Spacek's Carrie is a final girl who took matters into her own hands, telekinetically leveling everyone in her path. That she was dreamed up by men is exactly the point. For 50 years, the core idea of the final girl in the genre has been someone else's…
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