Trigger Warning: The narrative of Touch Me grapples with difficult topics involving sexual abuse and addiction. Additionally, there are a few brief sequences of light-strobing that might be difficult for photosensitive viewers.
“And crawling on the planet’s face, some insects, called the human race … lost in time … and lost in space … and meaning.”
– Charles Gray as The Criminologist, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Midnight movies have a long-tradition going back to the 1970s. Before at-home programs like The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs (2018 – present), USA Up All Night (1989 – 1998), or Elvira’s Movie Macabre (1981 – 1986), one had to go to the theater to see weird, wacky, possibly low-budget, and most likely cult worthy productions amid other seekers of the strange and unusual. The tradition carries forward with those selected to take part in the upcoming Sundance Film Festival’s Midnight section, such as the latest project from writer/director Addison Heimann (Hypochondria), Touch Me, which incorporates a variety of genres and tones within a comedic sci-fi thriller exploring themes of trauma and recovery within a framework of aliens and sex. If you’re a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) or Japanese pink cinema or generally oddball storytelling that seems tangentially linked but hides a powerful message within the idiosyncratic execution, Touch Me harkens back to the era of Midnight movies that did all of these with unforgettable style.
Five years after a sexual encounter left her feeling on the precipice of death, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) is no longer pursuing a career in journalism, or anything else really, as she lives with her codependent best friend Craig (Jordan Gavaris) and generally serves as his emotional support friend while he himself subsides off the financial benefits of his family. However, when a plumbing issue neither can afford to repair coincides with the reemergence of Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), Joey’s ex, the two take a calculated risk to accept his weekend invitation just to get away from the putrid stench of their financial woes. But it would be a weekend out the two would never forget.
Heimann walks a fine line between quirky and horrifying throughout Touch Me, incorporating visual elements or vocal deliveries that lean into the absurd while other aspects create a literal and figurative hematoma. The opening, for instance, involves a rather striking long take in which Joey tells the audience the story of what happened five years ago. In this scene, she’s talking to someone just out of frame as the camera slowly creeps from a mid-range to a tight shot, an action that not only visually hints at the significance and sincerity of Joey’s story, but forces the audience to unblinkingly process each word. Later, when preparing to approach a clerk about a job, the “help wanted” sign populates by her head like a thought bubble in a comic, one which replicates several times, each with its own noise, before they all disappear. At first, the appearance seems quite strange when compared against the straight telling of the film so far, the camera work of that initial scene suggesting something quite intense, until more slightly idiosyncratic moments occur — visually and auditorily — and one realizes it’s the vibe of the film as a whole: just a jump to the left. Heimann solidifies this with a silly edit during the transition from Joey and Craig’s place to Brian’s, the overhead drone shot looking down on them accompanied by an ominous bit of scoring that switches to a light-hearted song when it cuts to the pair in the car on the drive and back again, the switches possessing such tonal dissonance that one can’t be sure if the characters are on the way to their doom or are merely on a wacky adventure.
The truth is a bit of both.
Olivia Taylor Dudley as Joey in Addison Heimann’s TOUCH ME. Photo courtesy of Rustic Films/Sundance Film Festival.
All of the silliness that happens, even the presentation of the plumbing issue and Joey and Craig’s irresponsible reactions to it (going to great lengths to block it out), is merely underscoring a mind-bending, life-altering experience as Joey and Craig are pushed to confront exactly who they are in order to share time with Brian. It’s not trauma-dumping if it’s potentially the difference between saving the world and helping end it, which makes Heimann’s tale the most wild advocate for therapy and doing the hard work to improve one’s psyche. For instance, what kind of person would go back to the ex that hurt them and bring their best friend, someone equally-but-differently vulnerable, along for the ride? What kind of person would rather experience a pain they know instead of the ones they don’t? The kind of people who’ve been hurt over and over and haven’t found anyone who’ve supported them. In short, vulnerable people., those who long for the kind of chemical reaction that touch can provide, even if it’s just the sense physical contact brings the illusion of healing. While one might not expect much successful silliness to emerge from such narratively propulsive material, it’s not so much used for the audience’s entertainment as it is to get the audience to consider their own position on addiction and mental health. This bit is sneaky as the moments when Joey is at her most raw, one would think this would be in the shunga (春画)-inspired sex sequences, but it’s actually from extended testimonials she gives straight toward the camera under the guise of healing as directed by Brian. He promises pleasure, he promises peace, and he promises healing, and it all comes at the cost of your trauma — the more intense and raw, the better. Dudley (She Dies Tomorrow) is remarkable in these sequences, unflinchingly starring down the camera and the audience as she strips Joey’s emotional armor until there’s nothing left but a necrotic wound; one which, shock among shocks, only Brian has the tools to mend.
This brings us to the brilliant concoction that is Brian as designed by Heimann and brought to life by Pucci (Evil Dead). Physically, Brian looks like a figure out of a Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni painting and, personality-wise, steals from the Italian, African, and Japanese communities with abandon. Dressing in fancy track suits, he begins his morning with a hip dance routine as meditation and has constructed at least two rooms that feel ripped from the Edo period of Japan (1603-1868). This last bit is particularly important as much of the sexuality likewise borrows from the aforementioned shunga, a form of Japanese erotic art involving the observation of sex acts. Of course, one of the most famous is the 1814 “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” by Hokusai, a woodblock piece that depicts an octopus devouring a naked woman. Brian seems positively non-threatening at first, but his appropriation belies someone without an identity of their own, which makes his friendliness, his incorporation of other cultures’ fashions, styles, and art, as well as his increased interest in vulnerable Joey, most dangerous. Beware the individual who believes a mental mind fuck can be nice.
Like all who suffer some kind of trauma, Touch Me overflows with humor. It’s in the brilliantly timed vocal delivery from Dudley and Gavaris (Curse of Chucky) as the besties their characters are, the bizarre music video editing that accompanies one particularly mediation, and a poignant final moment at the end. If we cannot laugh at the parts of ourselves torched by life’s cruelties, then those things threatened to consume us whole and take them for themselves. The utilization might strike some as discordant against the whole, but, given the tender subjects Heimann explores, a dash of humor invites the necessary light required to combat darkness. And combat darkness Touch Me does, from uncomfortable start to declarative finish.
World premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2025 Midnight Section on January 28th, 2025.
In select NYC theaters March 20th, 2026.
In select theaters March 27th, 2026.
Available on Fandango at Home April 2nd, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Sundance Touch Me webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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