Sundance Film Festival 2025 – Interview with ‘Touch Me’ Filmmaker Addison Heimann

After a series of unfortunate events leaves their house uninhabitable and reeking of poo, two co- dependent friends, Joey and Craig, find themselves homeless and out of options. That’s when Joey’s mysterious ex resurfaces. He wants her back. Along with being hot, Brian also happens to be an alien whose touch makes anxiety and depression disappear. The two venture to his compound for the weekend with the hope of being healed from past traumas, but underneath Brian’s veneer of healing is a sinister plot filled with murder, mayhem, and blood. TOUCH ME is a psychosexual horror-comedy about the nature of co-dependent friendships and how far we are willing to go for a slice of happiness.    

The beauty of the horror genre is how you can insert incredibly vulnerable and deep emotions, which more often than not come from the artist's deep-rooted point of view from their own personal experience. And the additional beauty of the genre is that there aren’t really any confines on how you do it – other than make it your own flavor. And that’s exactly what we get from filmmaker Addison Heimann’s horror feature film Touch Me, which will be having its World Premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 28 in the Midnight Section.

And often with most Midnight Section films, they're out of this world, gory, and inherently unique to the filmmaker bringing it to audiences. Touch Me doesn't shy away from any of that - there's interspecies sexual relations, great and rather obscure characters at play, therapeutic dancing, and lots of blood. But it's more than that. It's an exploration of heroin-like addiction of co-dependency and what that can look like through a hyperbolic lens.

Writer-director Addison Heimman recently spoke with Script about how the concept of the story came to him from a personal place and a recent friendship breakup, how Japanese pink films were an important key player to the style and tone of the film, his creative collaboration with his cinematographer and production designer, and so much more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: What was the root of the story for you?

Addison Heimann: It's just depression, honestly. [laughs] I have obsessive compulsive disorder, and a lot of things going on with my family, a lot of sadness. And I watched this movie, which I highly recommend, called The Untamed, which is about an alien in a shack who fucks people and they feel euphoria, and they get addicted to it, and it's a very serious movie. And I'm like, 'That's fucking awesome!' But when I was so sad and so depressed, I was like, 'I want an alien to fuck me and rid me of things of my life.'

And it just so happens that I've been learning Japanese for five years, and so I've been really entrenching myself in film - I was such a Japanese cinephile, not just anime, but a lot of films from the 60s and 70s, called Pinku eiga, or pink films, which are kind of their version of exploitation movies. A lot of female revenge stuff, which is my bread and butter. So, things like Female Prisoner and Lady Snowblood and basically anything Tarantino homage for Kill Bill is kind of the inspiration for this.

And so, I was going through a pretty devastating friendship breakup at the time as well, and I was just like, 'I don't think she's wrong. I might be wrong.' I'm going to write a movie from the perspective where I kind of explore this relationship and see kind of what went wrong, and also create a story about addiction and trauma and the things that I've been through, and the things that my friends and family have been through. And with that kind of hyper-saturated, wild style of 70s Japanese cinema, Touch Me was born.

Sadie: You definitely see that influence in the style and the rhythm of this film. The exploration of your characters and their friendships - friendship breakups are devastating sometimes.

Addison: They suck! And no one talks about it. They're like, 'Oh, you're not friends with them anymore.' I'm like, ‘No, you're friends with them for years,’ more so sometimes in romantic relationships, and you lose a part of your soul - it blows.

Sadie: And seeing that between Joey and Craig, and how they become involved with Brian and Laura - as a viewer, is really cool to see how you're there's this discovery of the finding the lie beneath the truth as they go deeper in their co-dependency with Brian.

Addison: Craig is, I think no surprise, based off of me. We can say that. [laughs] I'll protect everybody else, but Craig is, and also, Joey is me in some kind of way, but also friends of mine. But I think ultimately, it's like, especially with my OCD, I'm obsessed with being good. I have this concept that I have to be good, and if I'm not good, I'm bad. And one thing that you're not supposed to do when you have obsessive compulsive disorder is seek reassurance from others, because that, sadly, doesn't work. And so, Joey has OCD, and in the movie, her tic is cleaning her ears whenever she gets anxious. And Craig in some ways, has either undiagnosed OCD or anxiety, where he just seeks reassurance all the time, especially when he's being bad and he wants to be told that he's good. And that's something that I really was trying to figure out in my brain, of where this comes from. And so essentially, that's where this kind of relationship bloomed.

And I think with Brian, we all have that guy. I was actually talking to someone about this, there's a lot of guys that would be cult members if they weren't so lazy, because they're essentially like a cult of one, or a cult of two, essentially what this movie is. It's like a guy who is just trying to basically center everything around himself and through that the ugliest sides of my version of myself, and then of a friend come out.

It's also just a metaphor for addiction, right? I think the one of the worst things about OCD is the possibility for finding something that takes it away temporarily, only to be sucked back down into your negative self. And that is ultimately what Brian represents, is kind of just like this heroin monster who will fix you for a moment but will not fix you forever. And ultimately, I think when I was writing this movie, I was trying to come to terms with the idea that my mental illness will never disappear, and there's nothing that will ever take it away, and the only way through is to own up to your shit and do the proper things. And I think especially with Joey, which is where it comes more in terms of my sense of who I am. It's like going from this idea of just kind of wandering around aimlessly and just trying to find safety through the least amount of work possible, and ultimately, regaining your purpose and regaining your identity at the end for her.

Sadie: In terms of the writing aspect, this could be a very therapeutic process, but how or when did you know it was time to write this?

Addison: I started writing it in December 2022. My first feature was about my mental breakdown. And then I got through it and then wrote about it. And I was like, 'You can get better!' And then I got worse again, which sucks. My whole goal as a filmmaker is to write queer stories in the genre space that talks about mental illness. And if I get the opportunity to do that in every movie - I'm going to. And also, it just stems from the idea, because I'm just constantly wrestling with my own mental illness, and one of my biggest fears is that I will affect somebody else with it, so I try to keep it as down as possible.

Related: Writing as Therapy: A Conversation with HYPOCHONDRIAC Writer-Director Addison Heimann

And so, I kind of wrote an outline for it. I don't think it was necessarily as therapy, but it was just as like 'Help. I'm drowning.' And I sent it to my producer, and I said, I think that the actual quote was, 'Read this now or I'll die of irrelevancy.' [laughs] Which is so egotistical to say. But, you know, listen, sometimes we're there. And he read it and gave me notes, and I started writing it, and I think I was just making jokes for myself with things that I found funny.

I also think there's a really kind of morose humor that people who go through trauma have about it. And it's almost like that thing where there was a point where it's like, 'Oh, let me just tell you all the things that is happening in my life right now.' And I'm talking to you like I'm talking to them, and they're just like, 'Are you OK?'

Sadie Dean: I'd love to talk about the approach to developing this world, and the creative collaboration with your DP and your production designer, especially on an indie budget.

Addison: I love Dustin Supencheck, my cinematographer. This is our third time working together, and Stephanie Reese was our production designer - our first time working together. But basically, because I was homaging in a very specific time in cinema, I had a lookbook, had all of that, and then I was like, ‘Listen, these are all the things that I want to homage that I want to do, so these are the shots that are important to me.’ I'm a collaborative person. I didn't go to film school. I don't ascribe to the auteur theory. That's why, at the end of the movie, when the credits roll, it says, 'A film by' and then it lists the credits, because that's how I make movies, and the best ideas win.

And one of my favorite ideas, you may have noticed, the movie is shot in three separate aspect ratios, and it's done so purposefully. Especially, creating the look of the alien world, I was like, this is in Japanese cinema of the 70s. And also, a movie called Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, which is a Paul Schrader movie out of the 80s. There are these scenes that take place that are deliberately built on theatrical sets, that are meant to look like they're almost on a stage. And things are theatrical in their nature. And I was like, 'That is the look that I'm going for, especially in the alien world.' And a lot of those movies, the pink films of the 70s, are shot in 2:4 aspect ratio.

Related: The Allure of the Macabre: Robert Eggers Talks ‘Nosferatu’

So, Dustin and I were like, ‘What aspect ratio do we shoot in?’ And then he calls me, ‘You're gonna think I'm insane, but I think we should shoot in three.’ And I went, 'I know, I think you're right. Let's go for it.' And then my producers were like, 'What?' [laughs] We shot all practically, all of the effects are practical. We have film grain, all of that kind of stuff, because I'm homaging a certain time and cinema.

But also, isn't it beautiful that that also happens to keep the budget low? Because we shot on the studio space for two weeks, and that house, we were so lucky. We were originally trying to find a place out in the desert, and then this place came up, and it looked like a flying saucer. So, Steph didn't have to do a lot for the house. But then when we got to the stage days, her crew worked their butts off.

And then with the concept of lighting, it has to be theatrical. The scenes that exist in shadow, or the scenes that exist in monochromatic color, and they would come up with these brilliant ways of execution. And I think the collaboration between all three of us...it's so stupid, but that sports metaphor, when you're in the zone? That's how we all were doing it in this kind of really cool way, and I'm really satisfied with the execution. I must say, I think we all really brought our A-game.

Touch Me premieres January 28 at 10:15 pm MST at The Ray Theatre in Park City. Tickets and details here.