by Hope Madden
Touch Me
About a decade ago, filmmaker Amat Escalante made a movie about sexual frustration, bad decisions and tentacle sex. The Untamed grounded the fantasy in a profoundly ordinary and relatable human drama, limiting the absurdity and amplifying the horror.
Addison Heimann leans far more absurd with his tentacle sex horror Touch Me, a potent drug metaphor that speaks to a modern malaise.
In a lengthy and surprisingly effective opening monologue, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley, exceptional) explains her situation to her psychiatrist. A weirdly good-looking alien in a tracksuit (Lou Taylor Pucci) came to save the planet from climate change and convinced Joey to have cross-species intercourse. His touch made her mind go quiet for the first time in her life, but she fled because she nearly died.
Still the lure of a quiet mind proves too much and soon Joey and her best friend Craig (Jordan Gavaris) cave into temptation and find themselves hooked.
Which doesn’t sound funny, but Heimann’s delightfully accepting glimpse at modern slackerism paired with Pucci’s wide-eyed narcissism and hip hop moves keep things light despite a lot of truly dark turns. At its core, Touch Me is about deeply damaged people struggling to face a reality that cannot make them happy and the incessant temptation of hard drugs to silence that anxiety.
For that reason, the silliness sometimes seems tone deaf. That, or the dramatic turns seem maudlin. But only briefly, mainly because of the commitment of Heimann’s small but talented cast.
Dudley and Gavaris affect a believable co-dependence, their banter a familiar and humorous cadence of self-loathing and support. Dudley is particularly impressive in a role that holds the metaphor, horror and silliness together. And Pucci hits a perfect tone for oblivious track-suited narcissist.
The writing does not always serve the actors as well as they serve it. There are holes in logic that Touch Me laughs off by pointing them out—a fun tactic, but not a solution. And the whole feels slight given the deeper ideas sewn throughout. But the film is an enjoyable, sloppy, relatable mess with insight and fun to spare.
