Hello, cinema lovers. Addison Heimann's Touch Me is proof that a film can be too horny to be scary and too sad to be funny, and still somehow work, kinda. Framed as a sort of soft-core porn, art-house alien horror movie, Touch Me is really interesting. How interesting depends on how successfully you can suspend your common sense.
Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) begins this tale, telling her therapist the whole saga in flashback. Her life is framed in a swamp of childhood trauma and rejection. Into this life comes an alien called Brian. Played by Lou Taylor Pucci, he's dressed in a dapper tracksuit, dances topless and is charming and oddly attractive. Brian's alien touch dampens the traumatic voices in Joey's head. Nevertheless, she runs away from him initially, probably out of fear of the unknown.
Enter Craig (Jordan Gavaris), her gay best friend, a lovable but slightly lost layabout living on family handouts who takes her in. A series of domestic mishaps lead the hapless duo back to Brian, and soon Craig is similarly drawn to Brian's alien charms. Laura (Marlene Forte), Brian's assistant, is a deranged middle-aged woman with sexual designs on Brian for herself. All this leads to a heady toxic situation.
Dudley is really great in this project. She plays sex addiction as a quiet, horrible thing rather than a spectacle. That's the smartest choice in the movie. Gavaris matches her in his own timid performance. His Craig is shallow until suddenly he isn't, and his performance goes from laid back to totally desperate. Pucci understands exactly what's needed from Brian the alien.
He's odd, self-involved, and completely narcissistic. Think Predator playing Warner Huntington III (Legally Blonde). Never once does he ask us to like him, and we don't. Forte turns in a fine performance; her Laura is wounded and terrifying. Every scene she's in feels out of place in a good way.
Heimann directs like he's dared himself to go further over the top as the movie progresses. Split screens. Dream sequences with blurry close-ups and red-pink colours are all the rage here. A crystal room lit red with a kind of Chinese space ship vibe. The cinematography treats the alien's house like a fever dream at times, all glows and shadows. The script and the plot are pretty loose, to say the least. Logic gaps get ignored rather than addressed; the movie initially gets away with its lack of strong narrative, but that wears thin as the film progresses.
This film handles queerness with more care than you would think an arthouse horror might. Craig isn't just set decoration. His arc runs straight through grinder rejection, historical abuse, shame and the specific danger of finding comfort in a person that maybe wants to consume you. That's not subtext. It's the actual plot here; subtlety is for another project.
The sex scenes themselves, tentacles included, are shot with real artistic, almost erotic intent. However, before long those tentacles start to become more dangerous, and there's something quietly interesting in how casually queer desire sits alongside the horror. It's never explained, never apologised for, just shown on screen.
Does it fully work? No, not completely. Scarlet Johansson gave us a better sexual, low-budget, creepy alien performance in Under the Skin. But this film tries to be more out of the box than most horror comedies manage. Plus a willingness to sit with all the characters' historical traumas is to the writers' credit. Mildly recommended, with a raised eyebrow; watch out for Brian's fantastic dance sequences topless.
Touch Me is available now on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.
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