Critic Reviews

Touch Me is worthy of the same regard as the great hard drug classics like Trainspotting and Requiem For A Dream. In fact, Touch Me is the new heroin beacon shining high on the arthouse hill.

As fun as the film is when it leans into its genre trappings, Touch Me wouldn't be anything without its small-but-superb cast. Olivia Taylor Dudley, largely underutilized beyond her time on The Magicians and with Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, is transcendent as Joey, easily delivering a career-best performance.

The cherry on top of this admittedly weird cocktail is a strong streak of genuine sensuality – if it’s your first encounter with tentacle sex on screen, you might be surprised how appealing Heimann and his cast have managed to make it seem.

In trying to do too much, the filmmakers end up with much less than they could have.

Although the story only gets more and more unsatisfyingly perplexing as it goes on, the filmmaking tools used to tell it are exceptional.

Heimann is so focused on the spectacle of it all that he forgets to do anything with it emotionally or formally, dragging everything to a close, as we return back to the beginning with little of anything meaningful or engaging occurring over the film’s running time.