Rating: R | Runtime: 90 minutes
Release Date: July 31st, 2026 (USA)
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Director(s): Gregg Araki
Writer(s): Gregg Araki & Karley Sciortino

Stop pretending like you have a conscience.

Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) wakes up in women’s lingerie before stumbling outside with blood streaming from his mouth to find Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) lying face down and naked in the pool. He rushes to the edge and jumps in, reaching for her body to pull her from the water and attempt CPR. Before we discover what happens, however, Gregg Araki transports us back in time to provide the necessary context as to what he was doing there in the first place.

Araki and co-writer Karley Sciortino (who previously worked together on “Now Apocalypse”) are setting up the structure that will define I Want Your Sex for its duration, introducing Elliot’s fresh-faced innocence basking in the optimistic glow of working as one of Erika’s assistants before returning us to the disheveled weeks-later train wreck their BDSM relationship wrought. Even when sitting across from the cops, however, he refuses to blame her for any of it.

So, it’s not hard to side with Detectives Zola (Margaret Cho) and Zem (Johnny Knoxville) when they respond to that refusal with incredulous looks since you’d be a fool not to understand the dynamic at play. Everything Elliot says proves that Erika groomed him to be her submissive from the start with her position as his boss meaning his consent could never truly negate that fact. That she also subsequently destroyed his life only makes the disconnect worse.

It also makes it funnier … and that’s the real goal. Because despite all the sex talk pontificating from Erika about Gen-Z not having enough and common-sense retorts from Elliot explaining the abnormal times in which they were forced to usher in their twenties, Araki and Sciortino don’t have that much to say. This is less a satire on the state of the world (beyond Mason Gooding’s Zap trying to make it a thing) then it is a ludicrously over-the-top farce.

Don’t therefore waste your time looking for meaning in all that dialogue. It’s truly only there to constantly remind us how much we love to put on airs to impress others with our confidence regardless of whether we have anything useful to say. Elliot constantly embracing logic to earnestly tell Erika that what she’s saying is a direct refutation of what she said the previous day isn’t a punch line. It’s the point. She’ll do and say anything to get what she wants.

That he’ll keep complying no matter how insane her demands or how mercurial she proves when leading him on proves he will too. So, it does make sense that Elliot won’t blame her for the shambles his life has become by the end. He used her just as much as she used him. And while we can feel sorry about some of it (Chase Sui Wonders as his BFF Apple) and laugh at the rest (Charli XCX as his apathetic girlfriend Minerva), he might just be better for it.

Araki is having a lot of fun ruining this guy’s life too. He gets the humor inherent to Elliot inevitably proving a submissive in all aspects of his existence. This character doesn’t fight for anything. He accepts Minerva’s indifference at face value. He endures Zap’s ability to make him feel unwanted even as he demonstrates that he’s the only one who cares. And he always comes crawling back to Erika … even when he knows he should run away.

The film is at its best when it leans into its absurdity via Elliot’s fantasies. I only wish it did so more. There are two very brief instances of animation at the start that lend an irreverent tone missing from the duration. The numerous examples of Elliot seeing Erika through lust-colored glasses pick up some of the slack (in large part to Wilde having an absolute blast), but most of the comedy is sardonically dry by comparison. That’s not a bad thing. It just is.

I think the reason is partially to remind us that there’s still a mystery to be solved. (Who killed Erika?) I’d be lying if I said I cared, though. At a certain point I found my groove just sitting back and enjoying the mess. Cho and Knoxville are great each time we return to the interrogation room, but I was mainly invested in how much further Elliot would fall. What else would his cravings and Erika’s manipulations ruin? How bleak would rock bottom prove?

Hoffman is perfectly toeing the line between gullibility and trust just how Erika describes him. We revel in his excitement to live out his fantasies and applaud his defiance when things go too far (even if he contributes to it). And Wilde is transfixing as the puppet master pulling his strings with a trickster gleam in her eye. Whenever she reminds him it’s purely physical for her, she ensures there’s enough of a wink to make Elliot think she might be lying to herself.

The attempt to instill an eleventh-hour mystery above the mystery for a grand reveal is too superficial to pay it any mind as meaningful to the plot or as a spoof, but I did enjoy the double epilogues devolving into extremely chaotic absurdity. The latter reminded me how much crazier I Want Your Sex still could have been while Wonders’ scene-stealing performance kept reminding me how poignant it was too. It may leave you wanting more, but it entertains, nonetheless.

---

Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in I WANT YOUR SEX, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.