‘Touch Me’ seduced Sundance audiences with its gory, outlandish tale of an alien cult leader with addictive tentacles. Its director says it was inspired by his life.

Each year, Sundance Film Festival curates a Midnight program filled with unusual independent horror movies. The slate in 2024 included breakout hits Love Lies Bleeding and I Saw the TV Glow. In 2025, comedic and gross horror films like Together and Touch Me left audiences both squirming and cracking up.

Touch Me was written and directed by Addison Heimann. It follows Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and her codependent roommate Craig (Jordan Gavaris), who evacuate their apartment after a stomach-churning plumbing mishap and move in with an alien cult leader whose sex appeal and addictive touch wreak havoc on their friendship.

“People have been calling it “Fun-der the Skin,” Heimann said, referencing the haunting 2014 film Under the Skin, in which Scarlett Johansson stars as an alien seducing men, then banishing them to an alternate dimension. Touch Me has all the extraterrestrial chaos with a more playful tone.

Heimann and Dudley spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about the delightfully bizarre film before its Sundance premiere.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What a wild movie. Where did the idea come from?

Addison Heimann: Depression is always the answer. I was going through a pretty terrible friendship breakup, and a lot of stuff was going on with my family. I had just watched this movie called The Untamed, which is about an alien who has sex with people in a cabin and makes them feel euphoric. I was like, “I wish that happened to me.” So I dreamt up a world that took the concept of an alien removing anxiety and depression and fused it with my own life and devastation at the time, and created this world where two codependent friends are f***ing an alien and start fighting because they’re so addicted to his touch.

I’ve also been learning Japanese for five years and became obsessed with Japanese films of the ’60s and ’70s — a lot of pink films, and ones like Kwaidan, Jigoku and House. I infused that wild insanity into this world.

Olivia, you are a sci-fi and horror star. What was it about this movie that drew you in?

Olivia Taylor Dudley: I read the script really fast and made the decision like, an hour after I got it. There were 50 reasons to do this movie: The tracksuits really got me, the hip-hop dancing, the alien sex and the trauma. I have OCD and I’m in [Exposure and Response Prevention] therapy, just like Joey. The movie does such a good job of touching on very real and personal traumas that people go through and I think everybody in the audience will relate to on one level or another. Then there’s this levity and hilarity and ridiculousness to it that makes it a great vehicle to get really important messages across.

At every turn, something horrible and traumatic happens to these characters — it all starts when they lose their house because their shower breaks and starts spraying sewage.

Heimann: That was a real thing that happened to me. I had to find a way to get $10,000 to completely redo the bottom of my house because it was filled with poo water. I took things from my real life for the movie.

Both Joey and her friend Craig have to address their past trauma that keeps coming up. How did you approach tackling those heavy themes?

Heimann: When Olivia hopped on board and became an executive producer and helped develop the script further, we created Joey’s backstory based on things she has experienced, and Craig’s backstory is based on things I’ve experienced or tangentially experienced. I think genre film is such an interesting vehicle for talking about things while being wildly entertaining.

That’s ultimately why I decided to make that mashup, because I wanted to talk about things that were close to my heart that I experienced and that Olivia experienced, and present it to people who may have experienced it too so they can laugh at it but also relate to it.

Olivia, how would you describe Joey as a character?

Dudley: She feels personal to me. I rarely get to play characters that feel so close to home. She is an individual who’s just kind of lost and floating in the world and is really codependent on somebody. She has a lot of love and heart, but it’s easy for her to get caught up on the wrong thing. And I think a lot of people can relate to her! If anyone else made a sexy alien who promised to take away all their anxieties, they would say yes, too. I can’t fault her for that. I think she’s a rad chick who has a lot of flaws that people can relate to.

Addison, did you have any inspiration for Brian, your alien cult leader?

Heimann: I think we’ve all had that kind of f***boy who sucks us dry and ruins your life. Brian is an amalgamation of experiences I’ve had that draw you in and spit you out in a way that makes you feel worse. I think we all have this person in our lives who’s both questionable but also so enticing.

Lou [Taylor Pucci], who plays him, offered to dye his hair black for the role, and when he did, we thought he looked like a weird Jared Leto that makes everyone go “him?” but also “him!”

We’ve talked about the characters, so now we must address everything else going on — the gore, the tentacles and the sexiness of it all. There’s so much going on. How much was practical vs. visual effects?

Dudley: I always knew I wanted to keep things 100% practical. There’s something great about seeing something tangible. I love virtual effects, but for this, I wanted the alien to look like a puppet. When you see the alien at the end, that’s a two-foot puppet we put in water. When Olivia rose during the sex scene, we had wires and a giant tentacle wrapped around her. I would say we ended up 90% practical with our VFX designer to keep things moving and fluid. There are so many [prop] heads floating around.

One last question for both of you: If you could recommend this movie to any kind of person, who would it be? What’s your ideal audience?

Heimann: I imagine it’s a trendy Gen Z person who wants to make fun of me but I still want to be friends with them.

Dudley: Obviously, I want the Gen Z-ers to think I’m cool! But I hope that genre audiences love and embrace it. I don’t think there’s anything else like this out right now. It’s a singular vision. The entire movie doesn’t let up.

Touch Me has not yet released plans for distribution.