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5 Indie Movies This Week: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Tony, Poison & More · Indie Film Weekly

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of August 7th, 2026.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This week in theaters, we've got a queer meta slasher at a cursed camp franchise.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've got young Anthony Bourdain thrown into a province town kitchen.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got cat videos in theaters because cinema contains multitudes.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Quick ask before we move on.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you can see one of these in the theater this weekend, indie films need early tickets, not couch admiration three months later.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: On demand, I've got Sertia Ronin rebuilding her life on the Orkney Islands after rehab.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for our classic, we're celebrating a 35th anniversary Todd Haynes debut that still feels like a provocation.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Want the written version of these picks each week?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I also publish the indie film weekly newsletter.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same five films and a quick read.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sign up at newsletter.com.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our first indie film in theaters this week is Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Jane Schoenbrunn.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a queer meta slasher about a horror franchise trying to rise from the dead, which is exactly what horror franchises do for a living.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hannah Einbinder plays an enthusiastic young filmmaker hired to revive the long-running Camp Miasma series after years of limp sequels and fading fan interest.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Her big idea is to bring back the original Final Girl, now a reclusive figure played by Gillian Anderson.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like smart branding.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It also sounds like the beginning of very bad boundaries.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: The film turns the reboot process into something psychological, sexual, bloody, and unstable.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's also about who owns a story, who gets used by a story, and what happens when a director becomes obsessed with the person she thinks can save the movie.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Schoenbrunn has a gift for making genre feel like identity trouble, wearing a costume, and this setup gives them a slasher playground with a lot of knives in the drawer.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It premiered a can, which also tells you this is not just a kill-count machine.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you like horror that knows the rules, breaks the rules, then asks why the rules were so strange in the first place, this is the one.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our second indie film in theaters this week is Tony, directed by Matt Johnson.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: This follows 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain before the books, the television, the travel, and the myth.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: He arrives in Provincetown wanting to be a writer, then stumbles into the world of a restaurant kitchen.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the summer starts to shape him.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The film is not about the polished, cigarette voiced cultural figure everyone remembers.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is about the kid before that, hungry, uncertain, arrogant in flashes, but not yet aware that the chaos around him may become his education.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dominic Sessa plays Bourdain, and it makes sense.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: He has that tall, slightly out of place energy, like someone trying to look more confident than he feels.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: The kitchen is the real school here.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Heat, speed, yelling, knives, burns, flirting, exhaustion, and the weird family structure that forms when everyone is overworked and pretending they are fine.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Johnson is a good match for this because he understands people chasing identity through workplaces, systems, and self-invention.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: The fun is watching the ingredients come together before the recipe exists.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: The future voice is not formed yet, but you can hear pieces of it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever worked in a restaurant, this may trigger memories.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some good, some involving a manager who used the word team too much.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our last indie film in theaters this week is Cat Video Fest 2026.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Directed, curated, assembled, blessed, or possibly herded by people with stronger focus than most of us.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a 70-minute theatrical collection of cat videos.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that is the movie.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, there are worse arguments for going to the theater.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: The point is not the plot.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The point is communal absurdity.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Cats knocking things off tables.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Cats staring into the void like they know what happens after death.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Cats getting stuck in boxes they absolutely chose to enter.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Cats showing the exact level of emotional availability that would get a person described as difficult.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: The genius of this as a theatrical experience is that the internet is usually solitary.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: You watch a clip at your desk or on your phone and pretend you are working.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here, the clips become a crowd event.
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  SPEAKER_00: People laugh together.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Kids lose their minds.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Adults pretend they came for the children, which is adorable and not always true.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's also a charitable angle to many cat video fest screens, with theaters often partnering with local animal organizations.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, this is silly.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: But silly has value.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: If your week has been too serious and you want 70 minutes of low-stakes joy with strangers, this is a valid and possibly medically advisable choice.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So in theaters this week, that's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Tony, and Cat Video Fest 2026.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is The Outrun.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Nora Fingscheid, it stars Sertia Ronan as Rona, a young woman who returns to the Orkney Islands after rehab, trying to rebuild herself in the place she once wanted to escape.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: The film moves between the Russian wreckage of her years in London and the stark, windy isolation of home.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: That structure matters because recovery is not shown as a clean before and after story.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's memory, temptation, shame, boredom, small victories, and the body slowly learning how to exist without the old escape hatch.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ronan is terrific because she does not make Rona noble.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: She makes her alive, difficult, funny and flashes, and sometimes impossible to help.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Orkney landscape becomes part of the drama, not as a cure, but as a force that strips away performance.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's nowhere to hide from the wind, the sea, or yourself, which is inconvenient if yourself has been the problem.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: The film also understands that going home can be both comforting and brutal.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: People remember who you were, even when you're trying to prove you are becoming someone else.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can rent it on Apple TV, Amazon, or Fandango at home.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our indie film classic this week is Poison, celebrating its 35th anniversary.
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  SPEAKER_00: Directed by Todd Haynes, this 1991 debut is not one story, but three braided together like a dare.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: One section is styled like a tabloid documentary about a young boy who kills his father and disappears.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Another is a black and white science fiction horror riff about a scientist whose experiment goes wrong in the most socially contagious way possible.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: The third is a prison story about desire, memory, and punishment.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: The film is inspired by Jean Genet, and it does not try to make itself comfortable for the room.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is the point.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Haynes takes fear, shame, queerness, violence, and moral panic and turns them into different movie languages.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's part melodrama, part pulp, part art film, and part middle finger to the idea that a first feature should behave.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: What still stands out is the confidence.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: The movie is messy in a deliberate way, but it knows exactly what it is attacking.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It came out during the AIDS crisis and the culture wars, and you can feel that pressure in every frame.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a casual classic pick.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is prickly, strange, and important.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can watch it on the Criteria channel or rent it on Apple, Amazon, or Fandango at home.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that wraps it for the August 7, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly.
• 8:35
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• 8:38
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• 8:40
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• 8:43
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• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then leave a quick review because even one sentence helps.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, keep it fearless, keep it curious, and keep it indie.