Summer Films Tackle Gen Z Sexuality and Alienation

A wave of summer movies, including One Night Only, I Want Your Sex, The Invite, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, explores generational attitudes toward sex, offering a raunchy antidote to reported Gen Z celibacy. One Night Only, a romcom starring Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, imagines a dystopian America where premarital sex is outlawed except for one night a year, with condoms priced at $2,000. Critics argue the film misinterprets the 'sex recession' as libidinal rather than existential, noting that Gen Z faces unique alienations from internet upbringing and the pandemic. I Want Your Sex, directed by Gregg Araki, stars Cooper Hoffman as a studio assistant to Olivia Wilde's provocative artist, exploring loneliness and desire through a doomed threesome. The Invite, directed by and starring Wilde alongside Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton, shares a dynamic of younger individuals entangled with older, experienced women. Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, featuring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, intertwines sex, death, and art, as a filmmaker reboots a slasher franchise to correct its transphobia, learning to let go of control for artistic and sexual epiphany. These films, rather than offering models for young sexual behavior, serve as cautionary guides, marking a return of messy, awkward sex to cinema after decades of unrealistic depictions and fears of its disappearance.