What is going on with the straights and sex in the year 2026?
It’s one of the first questions I had in mind after watching director Jonathan Schey’s feature directorial debut, “Everybody Wants to F–k Me.” Its bold title, which at first reads like a brag or complaint but then feels recontextualized as a threat, is a striptease for a climax that never comes, one that mistakes being different for being profound. You extract four separate movies from Schey’s film, and the problem is he swipes right on too many of these ideas for the result to feel like anything but disjointed mayhem.
This is all despite leading man Taron Egerton delivering, if not one of his best performances, his most eclectic one, as Adam, a man who finds his identity in not being like other men, being a true ally, and being someone women can feel safe with. He prides himself on reading the right literature (Edna O’Brien’s “Country Girl” in hand), dares not even to stare at fellow participants in his all-female yoga class, makes sure to listen more than he speaks (God gave us two ears and only one mouth after all), and if that’s not enough, he flashes around his MUBI tote bag to prop himself up as not just any cinephile but one with taste.
But a clever opening sequence reveals he’s no better than the toxic males he purports to be different from — when Adam and a woman (Mia McKenna-Bruce) have sex, he passively rejects her when she hints at a more substantial relationship. Just because he’s less obvious doesn’t mean he’s less malicious, and it’s to Egerton’s credit that he always keeps Adam’s vanity at the forefront of the character, as tempting as it might be to just play the victim.
The problem with defining yourself by what you’re not is that you never know what you’re for, and Adam meets his match when he hits on Sofia (a beguiling Jessica Henwick, channeling the same radiance and poise in this year’s underrated “How to Make a Killing”) at a bar one night. She’s an alleged student of classics who dismantles Adam’s performative behavior before the two can finish their pint, arguing that nice guys and f–k boys are synonymous.
He goes with her to her place, expecting to score, only to find himself smoking a substance he doesn’t recognize and being asked to strip down while repeating the words “I’m a bad boy and a piece of s–t.” The transition from breezy meet-cute to kinky humiliation ritual is one of the moments where Schey and editor Joe Randall-Cutler are in full control of the film’s tone, where the unpredictability of where the night goes feels less romantic and more sinister.
Adam, for his part, always ensures to keep up appearances, choosing the right words to seem above reproach. “I’m all for games as long as there’s communication,” he says a little too loudly, as if he expects Chris Hansen to come out of Sofia’s closet mid-strip. You see how this looks, right?
After Adam wakes up, he begins to notice that whenever he’s alone with a woman or group of women, they stare at him for an unnervingly long period of time, laughing at his jokes past their expiration date, eyes scanning his body with hunger. These obsessions become less exciting and more terrifying once he becomes what feels like a literal chick magnet, unable to move around anywhere without swarms of girls throwing themselves at him.
To his credit, Schey’s script mines this premise for all of its queasy, thorny implications; early on in the film, Adam and his friend, Emma (Charly Clive), go to a play of “Oedipus Rex.” It’s more than just a cursory reference, and the film cashes in on that check in cringe-inducing ways.
The issue then becomes that despite strong performances from the likes of Henwick, Egerton and Clive, the film never knows how to follow through on its plot developments in a meaningful way, pulling out too early when one thread seems to run its course and plunging into the next. By all means, take down the f–k boys who realize that it’s easier to just disguise one’s vices rather than try to change them, but by careening between different genres too often, the messaging gets muddled and never moves beyond the surface.
There’s no gesturing at what a better version of masculinity might be, and while a good takedown is its own reward, it becomes clear as the film goes on that Schey has simply run out of things to say.
Anna Meredith’s operatic score, incorporating all permutations of chants and yodels, as if to represent a chorus of the voices of women Adam has wronged, is another saving grace, its deployment often signaling the moment the film will enter another tonal shift.
It knows what it wants to critique and, per the aforementioned MUBI reference, Schey is comfortable critiquing the brands that have become the calling cards for a type of “enlightened” person, but for every bold choice it also undermines itself through the unspooling of its own drama.
Ironically, once the woman’s affections for Adam become violent, they become outward manifestations of Adam’s own twisted worldview: people devoid of personality, reduced to satiating appetite. Perhaps that mindset was what Schey had in mind, but it feels like an odd choice for a film that allegedly criticizes that outlook to then mine its thrills from it.
Ultimately, “Everybody Wants to F–k Me” is a movie that love bombs you with sweet nothings that may entice you for a moment, but as anyone who has spent too much time on the apps would tell you, sometimes it’s best to just cut off all contact before the going gets worse.
