You think Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is just about a small-town Kansas woman in ruby red shoes traveling to Hollywood on a quest to have sex with Jon Hamm?
Get hip to the subtext, man! It’s also a film about a tragic bullfighting fatality, John Slattery pulling out a man’s eyeball while imitating Howard Cosell, a nefarious plot to dismantle the corrupt global financial system, a mailman’s beef with his overcharging roofer and Henry Winkler’s role in the deadly consequences of a briefcase mixup.
But yes, this hilarity is centered around Gail (an irresistible Zoey Deutch), a fresh faced and endlessly upbeat hairdresser excited to soon marry her childhood sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy). But when a local book signing leads Tom straight into the legs of his celebrity sex pass, Gail’s best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) knows there’s only one thing to do.
Gail has to come with him to the big hair show in L.A., and settle the score with her own chosen wizard of aaahhs – Mr. Jon Hamm.
Director/co-writer David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models) and co-writer/co-star Ken Marino (veteran comedic support standout) have created a relentless assault of silliness that delivers a consistent string of smiles, yuks, laughs and belly laughs.
Beyond the multiple nods to the yellow brick road adventure, Wain and Marino lampoon celebrity culture, paparazzi, the Hollywood bubble and various movie genres with winks, nods and relish, tossing in several surprise cameos to boot. Deutch proves again that she is a versatile talent with serious comedy chops, and the wide-ranging ensemble (led by Marino, Slattery and a delightfully understated Ben Wang) offers fun from every angle.
Gail Daughtry is an unhinged cult leader in waiting, with a vibe that is set from the opening minutes. Ride it all the way through the credits (and one final Wiz bang) to score the funniest film of the year so far.
The disastrous production documentary has become a classic genre of its own. It’s easy to love a great movie, but there’s no highwire act like watching potential disaster unfold in real time, with the hope that artistic brilliance can still win out. And then there are the unfiltered geniuses working to the edge of madness, filmmaking greats like Coppola, Gilliam, Herzog, Coppola somehow again 45 years later … and now we can add to those luminaries the people who brought you Sharknado, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, and Transmorphers.
Australian director Anthony Frith turns in two features in one with Mockbuster, a documentary that follows his last best chance to direct a real Hollywood feature movie. The studio willing to give him a shot just happens to be the Asylum, the B-movie powerhouse behind the Sharknado series plus hundreds of other films that tend to be either blatant Hollywood ripoffs (“mockbusters”) or public domain material.
Frith enjoys a successful if artistically unfulfilling career in Adelaide directing corporate films. He still holds out hope for that last big break to create a real feature film, the kind he always dreamed of making as a kid. The Asylum gives him an immediate yes, and why wouldn’t they? The generous behind-the-scenes access portrays them as strict but self-aware schlockmeisters. And their studio process, while hectic, stays mostly on the rails. Frith’s role seems as much about watching the clock on a ludicrous six-day filming schedule as it is actually directing the production. And even then, the Asylum pairs him with in-house producer Brendan Petrizzo to make sure Frith gets his feature out of this. (And, perhaps, so Frith’s documentary also gets a happy ending that makes the studio look good.)
Frith is an affable subject, and he relays the right amount of incredulity at each new Asylum quirk such as not having a script just weeks before the shoot, or approving costumes on the first day of filming. But his ultimate embrace of “the Asylum Way” and the tightly budgeted—and mostly controlled—chaos that comes with it defangs his documentary’s more pointed critiques. The Asylum higher-ups are happy to lean into their roles as anti-Hollywood rogues. Co-founders David Rimawi, David Latt and Paul Bales all feature heavily in Frith’s interviews and know what they’re doing when they toss out soundbites like “We make shitty movies for people with bad taste.”
And these are shitty movies. They get churned out with the same ruthless efficiency as Hallmark, complete with in-house rules about runtime, plot beats and a stable of reliable names who can spout as much exposition as it takes to answer any lingering script questions that a six-day shoot didn’t have time to address.
It’s hard to root against Frith, who is likeable, competent and surprisingly unflappable in the face of near-impossible constraints. But it’s also hard not to see the same studio cynicism lurking beneath the Asylum’s B-movie gloss. Asylum movies are profitable, which is more than can be said for many studio films. But their system locks Frith into the same directorial trappings and lack of agency as any Marvel movie. Just because they’re doing it for a fraction of the cost doesn’t mean the result is anything that could meaningfully qualify as art versus content. Nor does it have anything helpful to say about the future of moviemaking.
Frith must know this as well. Why else do one for the arts and one for the charts with the same movie? Frith’s positive tone doesn’t address whether his experience would’ve been so rewarding if he hadn’t also had the chance to follow his actual dreams with Mockbuster. Yes, he succeeds on his own terms, in that Mockbuster is a far more enjoyable and introspective 90-minute movie than any Asylum film. But the cotton candy confection comes at the expense of the documentary compared to more probing films like Burden of Dreams, Lost in La Mancha or Hearts of Darkness.
Frith sums up the Asylum by declaring that “making a bad movie is better than making no movie at all.” But that’s easy for him to say. If we only had The Land That Time Forgot, his contractual Asylum film, would audiences come to the same conclusion? Would he?
Even if Spielberg’s latest alien adventure left you a bit frustrated, you might think twice about turning to The Outer Threat to scratch that E.T. itch.
That’s not to say it’s a terrible movie. But while Disclosure Day leaned into the extra-terrestrial question the more it went along, The Outer Threat does the opposite, ultimately becoming more of a family-based race against time and tech.
Scientist couple Daniel (Ready or Not‘s Mark O’Brien) and Michelle (Constance Wu, Hustlers and Crazy Rich Asians) live out in the country with their two teen kids (Calista Crowe, Isaac Smelcer-Zhang). They’re not married, and if Daniel keeps abandoning his family to search for signs of alien life in his underground lab, they won’t be any time soon.
This time he swears it’s different, though. Really. He finally has proof we are not alone. Too bad no one at NORAD is listening to him anymore.
And even when Daniel’s newest findings convince Michelle, she implores him not to..ahem…disclose the news to anyone. But in an impulsive moment, he emails the data to a trusted contact and instantly becomes the target of a mysterious threat.
In his debut behind the camera, writer/director William Woods crafts a competent ride full of paranoia, cautionary tales and family bonds. The cast is trusty and believable (William Fichtner’s second half cameo is an added bonus), but the third act moves the film closer to a softened young adult thriller assembled via well-traveled plot points and surface level messaging.
To say what films The Outer Threat will bring to mind is probably saying too much, but this is one where the trailer teases some closer encounters than those actually delivered.
Still, need a mild, 90-minute diversion in an air-conditioned theater with the kids? The Outer Threat will be perfectly fine and pretty forgettable.
Hope & George review this week’s new releases: Minions & Monsters, Enola Holmes 3, Winthrop/Lockbox, Touch Me, Gregg Allman: Music of My Soul PLUS count down the best films of the first half of 2026!
No, really! The horror of the first half of this year has been amazing! Bloody, original, meaningful, fun, terrifying—it has it all! So much, actually, that we’re obligated to run through a quick list of honorable mentions.
Writers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, fresh off the hilariously unhinged Pizza Movie, adapt the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip with a healthy scoop of witty cynicism atop one good ol’ American mean streak.
Jason Segel and Samara Weaving make an excellent pair of frassasins (friendly assassins), he of the emasculated man child and she of the exasperated younger wife wondering what she saw in this guy. Neither is blameless in the demise of the marriage, and the two actors make the deadly bobbing and weaving (pun intended) a surprising, squirm-inducing delight. Over Your Dead Body is an entertaining genre blast that’s pretty hard to ignore. And by pretty, I mean pretty funny.
And pretty gross.
9. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
On Prime Premium
If you enjoyed Ready or Not, I’m hard pressed to believe its sequel won’t also leave you smiling. Weaving is back for the sequel. This time, Grace is paired with her sister and reluctant sidekick Faith (Kathryn Newton), as both are forced to endure Round 2. And what this game teaches us is that the entire world is run by a bunch of billionaires, each of whom is unspeakably, irredeemably evil. Just like real life!
Weaving and Newton share a fun, funny, bickering chemistry. Their backstory becomes the spine of a film that, like the original, delivers series of entertaining, bloody set pieces.
8. They Will Kill You
On Disney+, Hulu, HBOMax, and Prime
Zazie Beetz is Asia. She takes a gig as a maid in old school, elite Manhattan high rise, The Virgil. Asia has ulterior motives. The Virgil has ulterior motives. It’s a home for Satanists and she is to be their sacrifice. But Asia has mad skills and the best hair in action hero history, so The Virgil’s residents don’t have such an easy time of it.
What follows is room after crawlspace after room of absolute carnage. They Will Kill You definitely bears a resemblance toReady or Not 2: Here I Come. But this film is more hard-core, the stakes are higher, and the confined, goretastic action is superior.
7. Crazy Old Lady
On Shudder, Prime
Crazy Old Lady traps us in a home with a dementia sufferer who’s stopped taking medication and has embraced a violent unreality. But Martín Marengui, an Argentinian filmmaker, is less interested in what the future holds as what the past hides. He takes a Death and the Maiden approach to much of the film. The result is a profoundly uncomfortable, breathtakingly performed exhumation of the kind of dark past that refuses to stay buried in the garden.
Mauregui builds tension, delivers unexpected shocks, and lets his exceptional cast compel your attention. Despite its exploitation title, Crazy Old Lady delivers a gripping tale.
6. Leviticus
In theaters
Writer/director Adrian Chiarella’s heartbreaking, aching coming-of-age horror deposits Naim (Joe Bird, wonderful) in an Australian backwater with his widowed mom (Mia Wasikowska). She’d been struggling but has found strength in a small community church. That community is less supportive of Naim and Ryan (Stacy Clausen), the boy he loves.
Leviticus turns into a supernatural horror story, but its themes are as true as they can be. Those who seek to save you are the danger, and that which they would save you from is your only salvation. The film is fearless, tender, aching, frightening, and a must see.
5. The Bride!
On Disney+, Hulu, HBOMax
One part Metropolis, one part Bonnie & Clyde, just a touch of Bride of Frankenstein and yet somehow entirely writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s own, The Bride! deserves that exclamation point. Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in a dual role—sort of a triple role, really: an unhappy Chicago gangster’s moll; Mary Shelley, silenced far too soon; and a monster, chaotic, unruly, unburdened by memory and guided by peculiar fury.
The Bride! delights with an anarchic energy, but its underlying plot is tight, its characters clearly drawn and beautifully performed, and its aesthetic wondrous. In just her second feature, after 2021’s sublime The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s cemented her spot as one of the most exciting filmmakers working.
4. Hokum
On Prime
Damian Mc Carthy is doing something right. The Irish filmmaker writes original stories, invests time and attention to visual storytelling, and produces eerie, memorable horror. There’s an elegance to his movies, but his tales are not meant simply to provoke thought or to elevate the genre. Caveat, Oddity, and now Hokum draw from a long tradition of Irish horror storytelling and love a jump scare as much as anybody.
Scene after scene balances a funhouse vibe with Irish folktale spookiness, and the vintage horror beauty of every frame beguiles you. Caviat offered quietly claustrophobic terror. Oddity delivered clever, melancholy horror. Hokum feels more polished yet more old school. It is perhaps less terrifying than Mc Carthy’s previous features, but it’s a haunting good time.
3. Backrooms
In theaters
Twenty-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons adapts a series of shorts that made him a YouTube force, all of it based on online Twenty-teens creepypasta dread of being trapped eternally in an endless, yellow, moistly carpeted maze of empty rooms with no hope of escape. The fact that Parsons turned this concept into a compelling feature essentially about our own labyrinthine minds and psychiatry’s impotence is pretty impressive for a teenager!
The endlessly talented Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve play two disillusioned adults lost in the maze. Here are two actors who’ve built careers on understated, natural performances that ground every moment onscreen in something honest. Which makes them a magnificent choice for a film where nothing makes sense, and that’s the whole point.
2. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
On Netflix
There is more visceral horror in the first three scenes of Nia DaCosta’s film than in the entire hour and fifty-five minutes of 2025’s 28 Years Later. She delivered the first great horror film of the year with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, also written by Alex Garland. It picks up the most intriguing threads left untied last time: those of the band of Clockwork Orange-esque marauders who saved young Spike (Alfie Williams) from the infected, and the beautiful soul covered in iodine and living amongst the bones, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes).
The filmmaker (Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels, Hedda) returns to horror with aplomb, expertly weaving from the grimmest horrors the sadistic, bewigged Jimmys can muster to the tender bromance blossoming over at the bone temple. And the climactic musical number she stages there is a thing for the ages.
1. Obsession
In theaters
Obsession is a film about consent. Sad by Bear (Michael Johnston) can’t bring himself to confess his feelings for coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He’s so desperate after one cringy missed chance that he breaks open a One Wish Willow he’d purchased as a joke and—without reading any of the warnings printed all over the box—wishes that she would love him more than anyone else on earth. And she does.
The themes writer/director Curry Barker mines are incredibly of-the-moment. Bear wants what he wants, but he wants it to be true. It isn’t, but that’s not good enough. Make it be true. But you can’t make something be true if it isn’t true, no matter how sad the boy is who wants it. Male entitlement masquerading as loneliness leads to violently self-centered behavior. Barker’s story, however jump-scary or genre friendly it becomes, never forgets this central, relevant concept.
One part Metropolis, one part Bonnie & Clyde, just a touch of Bride of Frankenstein and yet somehow entirely writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s own, The Bride! deserves that exclamation point. Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in a dual role—sort of a triple role, really: an unhappy Chicago gangster’s moll; Mary Shelley, silenced far too soon; and a monster, chaotic, unruly, unburdened by memory and guided by peculiar fury.
The Bride! delights with an anarchic energy, but its underlying plot is tight, its characters clearly drawn and beautifully performed, and its aesthetic wondrous. In just her second feature, after 2021’s sublime The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s cemented her spot as one of the most exciting filmmakers working.
9. The Drama
On Prime
Writer/director Kristofer Borgli continues his social provocateur-ing with look inside a couple thrown waaay off course by a shocking confession. The aftermath – affecting not only the couple involved but other couples in their orbit – becomes a darkly funny and intentionally cringe-worthy dissection of intimacy.
The thought experiment here isn’t just about Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson). Borgli, even more-so than he did with 2023’s Dream Scenario, invites you to imagine yourself in several roles (and, of course, to judge the choices of those around you). The script is crisp, the humor is coal black, and the pacing (aided by some nifty editing and visual cues) keeps you invested at every turn.
8. Tuner
In theaters
His first narrative feature may focus on busting into safes, but Oscar-winning documentation Daniel Roher shows some fine natural instincts for cracking the code that makes “romantic thriller” a crowd-pleasing genre ride.
The slightly contrived, crowd-serviced turns that come in Act Three would elicit a few eyes rolls in lesser films. But by then, Tuner has carved out its own safe space, as a pitch-perfect example of how to make an audience want exactly what you’re going to deliver.
7. Hokum
On Prime
Damian Mc Carthy is doing something right. The Irish filmmaker writes original stories, invests time and attention to visual storytelling, and produces eerie, memorable horror. There’s an elegance to his movies, but his tales are not meant simply to provoke thought or to elevate the genre. Caveat, Oddity, and now Hokum draw from a long tradition of Irish horror storytelling and love a jump scare as much as anybody.
In HokumI, scene after scene balances a funhouse vibe with Irish folktale spookiness, and the vintage horror beauty of every frame beguiles you. Caviat offered quietly claustrophobic terror. Oddity delivered clever, melancholy horror. Hokum feels more polished yet more old school. It is perhaps less terrifying than Mc Carthy’s previous features, but it’s a haunting good time.
6. Backrooms
In theaters
Twenty-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons adapts a series of shorts that made him a YouTube force, all of it based on online Twenty-teens creepypasta dread of being trapped eternally in an endless, yellow, moistly carpeted maze of empty rooms with no hope of escape. The fact that Parsons turned this concept into a compelling feature essentially about our own labyrinthine minds and psychiatry’s impotence is pretty impressive for a teenager!
The endlessly talented Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve play two disillusioned adults lost in the maze. Here are two actors who’ve built careers on understated, natural performances that ground every moment onscreen in something honest. Which makes them a magnificent choice for a film where nothing makes sense, and that’s the whole point.
5. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
On Netflix
There is more visceral horror in the first three scenes of Nia DaCosta’s film than in the entire hour and fifty-five minutes of 2025’s 28 Years Later. She delivered the first great horror film of the year with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, also written by Alex Garland. It picks up the most intriguing threads left untied last time: those of the band of Clockwork Orange-esque marauders who saved young Spike (Alfie Williams) from the infected, and the beautiful soul covered in iodine and living amongst the bones, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes).
The filmmaker (Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels, Hedda) returns to horror with aplomb, expertly weaving from the grimmest horrors the sadistic, bewigged Jimmys can muster to the tender bromance blossoming over at the bone temple. And the climactic musical number she stages there is a thing for the ages.
4. Toy Story 5
In theaters
Do we need another Toy Story? Actually, it appears we do. The miraculous thing about this franchise is that it’s never just about the toys or about the kids they love. It’s about a recognizable phase in a life. Which episode is your favorite depends entirely on how old you were when you started watching.
Episode 5 delivers an honest assessment of the way screens have invaded childhood and looks with clear eyes at the impact on children. Simultaneously, as Jessie (the genius Joan Cusack) chases down destiny, the film recognizes that, eventually, we all need to let go. Plus Woody has a poncho!
3. I Love Boosters!
In theaters
Boots Riley and a remarkable cast tell a wild, boldly colorful, sometimes Claymation, often surreal, occasionally demonic, fantastical, consistently smart, regularly hilarious, and shockingly personal tale about the individual’s need for community. And, of course, the inescapable evils of capitalism.
Underneath the metaphysical science fiction banter, beneath the scathingly comical evisceration of fast fashion, at the heart of the wacky heist flick, is a lonesome story that resonates. It’s all one struggle.
2. Is God Is
On Prime
Writer/director Aleshea Harris may be pulling from folklore and road movies, revenge flicks and historical dramas, noir and arthouse, exploitation and even horror. But the result of those inspirations is one of the most boldly original films of 2025. The filmmaker shows great affection for so many types of movies, and the way she bends these tropes and styles to the will of this narrative is fresh, unpredictable, and fascinating.
Violence and destiny, family trauma, classism and misogyny, and rage—Is God Is finds poetry and honesty and blood in all of it. Her cast, including Kara Young, Mallorie Johnson, Vivica A. Fox, and Sterling K. Brown, impress in every frame. But the star of Is God Is has to be the storyteller herself. Harris’s command of the audience and of cinema deliver the summer’s most daring and satisfying adventure.
1. Obsession
In theaters
Obsession is a film about consent. Sad boy Bear (Michael Johnston) can’t bring himself to confess his feelings for coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He’s so desperate after one cringy missed chance that he breaks open a One Wish Willow he’d purchased as a joke and—without reading any of the warnings printed all over the box—wishes that she would love him more than anyone else on earth. And she does.
The themes writer/director Curry Barker mines are incredibly of-the-moment. Bear wants what he wants, but he wants it to be true. It isn’t, but that’s not good enough. Make it be true. But you can’t make something be true if it isn’t true, no matter how sad the boy is who wants it. Male entitlement masquerading as loneliness leads to violently self-centered behavior. Barker’s story, however jump-scary or genre friendly it becomes, never forgets this central, relevant concept.
The air of Enola Holmes has only gotten fresher since the franchise debut in 2020. While more and more star-studded streamers carry the obvious stench of algorithm engineering, the formula at work in these Netflix installments seems perfectly suited to keeping the attention of home viewers.
First off, EH3 presents a headline-grabbing mystery: Enola’s legendary brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) has been kidnapped! And the timing couldn’t be worse, as Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) is trying to fight off serious doubts about her upcoming marriage to Lord Earnest Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge).
“Yes, he has a first name,” Enola tells us. “I was surprised, too!”
Brown’s ease with the fourth wall is just one part of her irresistible embodiment of this role. The personal invitation into Enola’s life and adventures is welcome, and Brown gives us a heroine that is endlessly fun to root for as we follow along.
Sherlock’s kidnapping means the dashing-as-always Cavill is more out of sight than last time, allowing Brown the focus she more than deserves. Her Enola wants to get married, yes, but she also wants to keep the name and standing she’s worked hard to attain. Enola is smart, heroic, flirty and romantic, a pretty super girl in her own right.
Director Phillip Baratini and writer Jack Thorne (both from Netflix’s Adolescence) make sure Brown gets the chance to show all those sides of Enola. And while the mystery may play out a tad too conveniently, the visual aesthetic bursts with interactive sleuthing and multimedia pop-ups that are consistently engaging.
The returning support cast (including Helena Bonham Carter, Himesh Patel, and Hattie Morahan) adds to the wonderfully frisky chemistry of the entire ensemble. Part three also allows some nostalgia for how these characters (especially our engaged couple) have grown, giving the film some sweet moments of emotion.
Forget about Sherlock’s kidnapping, Enola Holmes may be solving the mystery of holding a streaming audience without condescension or spoon-feeding. And once again, that’s a formula worth repeating.
There are six films now in the Minion-verse. Most of these are Gru movies, but honestly, without the minions, where would the Despicable Me features be?
Still, without a single, clear antagonist, the 2015 standalone film Minions felt adrift. Cute and goofy but pointless. To avoid the same trouble this go-round, Minions & Monsters pins the adventure on one creative little dude: James.
Centuries ago, when an early tribe of Minions searched the earth for a villain to assist, James drew pictures. These pictures told funny stories that entertained exactly one other Minion: Henry. (Henry, James and all other Minions are voiced by co-writer/co-director Pierre Coffin.)
The Minions’ quest to find their villain leads them eventually to 1920s Hollywood. Here is where Coffin unveils a love for classic moviemaking. Sure, every film in this franchise charms with hidden sight gags and funny Easter eggs. But Minions & Monsters drips with them. There’s a classic movie reference in nearly every frame of the film, beginning in the intro, where a tour guide (Allison Janney) explains to bored tourists the very important role James and Henry played in saving Hollywood and, indeed, the world.
Janney is not the only Oscar winner lending her voice, either. Christoph Waltz is Max, the harried director who discovers James, and Jeff Bridges plays twin studio heads Frank and Elwood. Plus, Jesse Eisenberg (no slouch!) voices Dort, an unlikely yet somehow perfect Minion ally.
With James in the hero seat, Minions & Monsters follows a more tightly scripted chaos. James decides to conjure some monsters so he can make a creature feature and conquer Hollywood. (If you think Goomi, the first monster conjured, sounds weirdly like Eric Cartman, there’s a reason for that. South Park co-creator and Cartman vocalist Trey Parker lends his voice to the wee green Cthulu cub.)
Characteristic of the franchise, the film is goofball anarchy. Minions & Monsters is quickly paced, brightly colored, silly, good-natured fun. The sheer amount of story sometimes causes the movie to drag. This is not helped by Janney’s lengthy first act exposition. But as a mash note to filmmaking and a goofy, family-friendly adventure, it’s a delightful reason to sit in the air conditioning this weekend with your kids.
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.
