I Want Your Sex Is the Horny Cure for a Sexless Generation

Sundance Film Review: I Want Your Sex
Director: Gregg Araki
Black Bear Pictures
Premiere: 01.23.2026

The king of queer new wave is back, baby! Gregg Araki returns to Sundance after a 12-year filmmaking break with I Want Your Sex, a dom-sub comedy thriller for the new generation. I went in expecting something as transgressive as Mysterious Skin, and ended up experiencing something as campy as Bottoms — and while surprised, I wasn’t disappointed. The satire of contemporary sexual politics is soft; it doesn’t skewer art or porn or Gen Z puritanism so much as gently poke it with a dildo, but it is refreshing to see a horny movie that doesn’t take itself seriously at all (I’m talking to you, Babygirl). 

Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) finds himself in another on-screen age-gap relationship, this time with electric powerhouse Olivia Wilde (Don’t Worry Darling). Elliott (Hoffman) is a meek, repressed art school graduate and the newest employee of provocative, unhinged artist Erika Tracy (Wilde). If you’re wondering if her work is any good, one of Elliott’s first tasks is to chew sticks of bubblegum and paste them onto a huge canvas, filling in the outline of a vagina (“The real art is convincing other people your art is meaningful,” she quips). Over the next nine and a half weeks, he becomes Erika’s eager sex slave, delighting in every opportunity to be spanked, pegged and humiliated by her.

Everyone knows that we’re in a sex recession. Audiences are hungrier than ever for sex on the screen (thank you, Heated Rivalry) but loathe to take a risk and ask someone out in real life. Araki uses Erika as a mouthpiece for his stance that this “retro sex negativity” has to go, and we all just need to fuck each other and get over it. Nothing depicted in I Want Your Sex is truly scandalous (though is it even possible to shock with sex anymore?) but it does drive home the message that intimacy can be anything: performative, toxic, messy, transactional and above all, silly. 

When all of these sexual misadventures start to make his head hurt, Elliott turns to his trust fund slut coworker (Mason Gooding, Scream) for reassurance, who hits him with the reality check that Erika doesn’t care about him — or anything, for that matter, besides her own celebrity status. Real-life nepo baby Gooding is sharp-witted and perfect for the role, but unfortunately remains trapped in the gay best friend cliché. Lord knows Elliott can’t confess to his blasé med student girlfriend (Charli xcx) who would much rather study neuropharmacology than sleep with him. Her performance is one-note, and she can’t quite nail the American accent, though it is a cheeky bit of casting to place her in a role completely opposite of her pop star persona. Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies) brings the most humor and heart to the film as Elliott’s roommate, a lesbian in denial whose pent-up insecurity finally comes out at the worst possible moment during an awkward threesome attempt. 

I Want Your Sex is awash in kitschy maximalism, from Elliott’s dick-shaped rug to Erika’s ridiculous dominatrix getup. Araki and co-writer Karley Sciortino’s script does a lot of the comedic heavy lifting, with punchy one-liners and visual (ball) gags aplenty. I have no doubt that the film will continue to stir up controversy for months to come, in large part due to the branding that takes notes from the Brat playbook: a simple, striking look designed to go viral (just replace neon green with bright pink and blue). 

More than anything, I Want Your Sex is FUN. It might not be as steamy or subversive as you want it to be, but Araki is bringing back camp, sex and most importantly, blooper reels during the credits. —Asha Pruitt

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.