Retro Horror Trend Captivates Young Audiences This Summer

Both films trade sleek minimalism for analogue, retro settings—vintage props, cassette tapes, fuzzy TVs, and dated interiors—plunging viewers into a pre-digital era. Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma pushes this further, following a director (Hannah Einbinder) who visits a deserted summer camp to recruit a faded starlet (Gillian Anderson) for a slasher remake. The retro fixation isn't just nostalgia; modern, sterile aesthetics lack the texture horror needs.

Haunted houses require shadows, creaks, and clutter, but today's cloud-based, minimalist homes offer none. Each film reimagines the haunted house: Obsession's apartment decays as its protagonist unravels, Backrooms' labyrinthine spaces hide monsters, and Camp Miasma's film set becomes a meta-horror playground. I was a fifth grader hanging around in the horror section at the local video store, obsessively renting and watching and just dreaming, says one filmmaker, capturing the nostalgic pull that drives this trend.