Summer Films Put Gen Z Sex Anxiety on Screen as 16% Fear Dating After Roe

1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Aug 10

This summer’s films are reviving sex on screen by framing it through Gen Z’s confusion, caution and loneliness rather than straightforward liberation.
One Night Only turns sexual conservatism into romcom dystopia—Congress bans premarital sex except for one night, and even condoms cost $2,000—but the review argues it mistakes an existential malaise for low libido.
I Want Your Sex and The Invite push younger characters into charged encounters with older women, using desire to expose alienation, muddled identity and the limits of sexual self-knowledge.
Camp Miasma takes the most nuanced approach, linking sex, art and death as inseparable impulses and showing its 29-year-old filmmaker protagonist learning connection by giving up control.
The broader shift suggests movies are recalibrating after years of thinner sexual content, presenting messy, awkward intimacy as a more honest reflection of Gen Z life.