Summer films tackle Gen Z's 'sex recession' — SkimNews
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- One Night Only is a romcom set in a dystopian America where Congress has outlawed premarital sex, lifting the ban one night a year; condoms in the film are priced at $2,000.
- Roe v Wade's 2022 overturning left 16% of single Gen Z adults more afraid to date, per data cited in the piece.
- I Want Your Sex (Gregg Araki, starring Cooper Hoffman, Olivia Wilde, and Chase Sui Wonders) frames a young studio assistant's entanglement with provocative artist Erika Tracy as a study in loneliness rather than desire.
- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun, starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson as the slasher franchise's original final girl) treats sex, death, and art as inseparable, presenting Kris's reboot of the franchise as a path to letting go of intellectual control.
- The article argues Gen Z's sex recession is 'existential' — rooted in internet-era alienation and pandemic-era adolescence — not libidinal.
- All three films share a dynamic in which a younger, less experienced person becomes entangled with an older, seductive woman who leads them toward self-knowledge through desire.
- The films function as 'cautionary guides' rather than models for young sexual behavior, marking a return of sex to cinema after years when its disappearance seemed likely.
Why it matters: By recasting Gen Z's declining sexual activity as existential disconnection rooted in internet-era alienation and pandemic adolescence rather than low desire, this critique reframes how studios should approach depictions of young sexuality. The films analyzed treat desire as tangled with loneliness, art, and mortality — suggesting audiences hungry for honesty will reward messy, unresolved sex over spectacle.
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