Touch Me

This is a difficult one to pin down, and honestly, that’s both its greatest ambition and its biggest flaw. It’s a wildly eccentric psychosexual comedy attempting to invent an entirely new genre, and I truly can’t think of anything else quite like it. But wanting to be audacious and successfully being audacious are two very different things, and for me, it simply didn’t work. And just so expectations are clear, this isn’t strictly a gay film. One of the two main characters is gay, and sexuality is definitely part of the discussion, but that’s pretty much where the queer aspect ends.
Joey and Craig are roommates, and their relationship is warm, though somewhat uneven. He covers the rent while she doesn’t, so he can get away with things like making Joey sit in her darkened room when his Grindr date arrives because he’s told the guy he lives by himself. The movie begins with Joey talking to her therapist and recounting this long, rambling tale about meeting someone named Brian, sleeping with him, and discovering that he’s an alien. The monologue drags on forever, running through her entire messy past with Brian before finally explaining how Craig entered the story. When Brian turns up in their lives again and their apartment becomes more or less uninhabitable, they wind up spending a weekend at his house. Brian possesses this alien power where a simple touch can soothe and subdue anyone he encounters, and naturally, both Joey and Craig are pulled toward him in ways they can’t fully control. Joey has tentacle sex with him one night, then Craig does, and after that it descends into a chaotic mess as the two try to work out how to get away from Brian while also resenting each other for being attracted to him in the first place. There’s also a woman employed by Brian who desperately wants to be his queen, but he keeps her at arm’s length. It all escalates into total mayhem involving sex, murder, and plenty of gushing blood.
This movie is going to divide people straight down the middle. It’s crude, disgusting, and graphic from its opening scene through to its last, and nearly all of it takes place in one location. I kept asking myself whether it was supposed to be satirizing something that was completely going over my head. It looks strange too, both because of the special effects and the overall appearance and atmosphere of many scenes. To give credit where credit is due, trying something this unusual is brave, but that kind of swing-for-the-fences approach is always hit or miss. In this case, it mostly misses. There’s barely any story, with the characters wandering around the house, either pursuing Brian or trying to undermine one another because of their own insecurities. Hardly any of it is amusing or compelling. The comedy relies heavily on playing the alien premise in this deadpan, matter-of-fact style, but most of what Brian does is neither weird enough to be funny nor threatening enough to be engaging, so it just sort of lies there. The actors are competent enough, and that’s honestly the kindest thing I can say. Oh, and as I said, Craig being gay and having one inter species encounter with Brian is really the film’s only queer element.
Some people will likely have fun with it, but it absolutely didn’t work for me. (3/10)