Touch Me Review: Alien Horror-Comedy Is Bizarre, Kinky Fun
An amorous pansexual alien charms the pants off two best friends in Addison Heimann's audaciously offbeat horror-comedy Touch Me.
A horror-comedy steeped in style and sensuality, Touch Me, from writer-director Addison Heimann, flies its freak flag proudly. So does Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), the movie’s tracksuit-wearing charmer who comes between down-on-her-luck Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and her gay bestie Craig (Jordan Gavaris).
Brian readily admits to Joey, soon after meeting her, that he’s an alien from another world disguised in human form. He’s also possessed of a certain talent for seduction.
In a lengthy but engaging opening monologue, delivered to her therapist (Ashley Lauren Nedd), Joey recounts meeting Brian and discovering the intoxicating bliss of his touch. Literally, the touch of his hand — or tentacles, in his natural form — can trigger waves of ecstasy.
Once they had sex she was hooked, she confesses. But a fear of what dangers Brian might be capable of was enough to force Joey to kick the habit.
Prone to letting characters monologue on their pasts, the movie tells more than shows several encounters pivotal to the plot. For a significant stretch, it offers just Joey’s word — and Dudley’s convincingly edgy performance — as setup, until formally introducing Brian, dancing to hip-hop in the courtyard of his posh desert vacation house.
He invites Joey and Craig to his pad for a stay, they accept his invitation, and the film takes an adventurous turn into psychosexual suspense, led by Pucci’s amusingly deadpan performance as loverboy Brian.
Isolated in the house with him and his fiercely attentive human assistant Laura (Marlene Forte), Joey and Craig submit to Brian’s guru-like guidance, and his intoxicating touch. Seemingly open to all sorts of sexual experiences, he seduces them both, giving way to softcore scenes of what he likes to call cross-species intercourse.
His mild-mannered horniness, played against Joey and Craig’s insatiable thirst for his touch, is a gag that keeps on giving. “I require both of you,” he calmly declares. The sexual tension simmering between all three of them serves as steady comic relief, while the besties weigh their fraying loyalty to each other.
Somehow, in the midst of this neon-tinted sci-fi sex fantasy, Heimann offers an astute commentary of the pair’s codependent, “straight girl-gay guy” dynamic. He also introduces severe childhood trauma to the volatile mix of emotions roiling inside Brian’s crowded house.
Sexuality haunted by trauma was at the heart of Heimann’s previous horror feature Hypochondriac. Here, however, PTSD seems sprinkled on like seasoning, to add psychological depth to the stew of dry comedy, B-movie paranoia, and carefree eroticism.
It’s a tasty mix much of the time, eccentric and unabashedly kinky, though not particularly chilling, until midway through, as loyal servant Laura becomes increasingly unhinged. Given a couple of scenes to drive home the character’s sinister obsessiveness, Forte, who also played an off-her-rocker mom in Hypochondriac, slices through the movie’s archly comic tone, ushering in a chill wind.
A noir-ish black-and-white flashback then supplies the film’s first true frights, before the low-budget makeup, creature effects, and body horror come out in force. One striking shot of Brian in his full alien glory — not unlike a much-discussed money shot in Boots Riley’s similarly eccentric comedy I Love Boosters — pulsates with dread and desire.
After all the buildup, Heimann undermines the climax somewhat, throwing in one last sequence describing rather than showing a character’s potentially tense escape. But the film’s balance of boldly bloody visuals, alluring atmosphere, and ballsy humor do ultimately come together with a persuasive touch.
Touch Me (★★★☆☆) is available for streaming on Shudder. Visit shudder.com.
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