‘Everybody Wants To F*ck Me’ review: Taron Egerton’s performance is only attractive element of UK sex comedy misfire

Dir: Jonathan Schey. UK. 2026. 97mins 

“I’m a nice guy,” Adam Samuels (Taron Egerton) persistently exclaims in writer/director Jonathan Schey’s confused sex-thriller-comedy Everybody Wants to F*ck Me. Adam is a supposedly sensitive lady’s man who has a one-night stand with the wrong woman, waking up the next day from the odd tryst to discover that all women just can’t get enough of him. But the dream soon becomes a nightmare as their desires become more ravenous. Edgerton’s fully committed turn as Adam is the one saving grace in a feckless and shallow film that’s little more than a thin premise. 

Little more than a thin premise

Schey makes his feature debut here having previously directed television, helming episodes of Ladhood – a soul-searching UK comedy series about a man reflecting back on the relationships and anxieties that have shaped him. With Everybody Wants to F*ck Me, Schey attempts a similar introspective trick with a gender lark that recalls movies like What Women Want, She’s All That, and more recently, Obsession. Those works saw self-aggrandizing men get their comeuppance from far smarter women, but this film, which premieres as a Toronto Special Presentation, misses the mark. Despite the picture’s attempt at broad appeal, even cinephile millennial viewers with experience of modern dating will find nothing of immediate value here. 

Adam is a real problem character in need of a competent critique. In the film’s engaging opening scene, we see this ’softboi’ smoothly approach a woman (Mia McKenna-Bruce) in a club who is being hit on by an overeager guy. Adam knows exactly what to say to the woman to reassure her. Though they spend the night together, Adam’s spark for her has dissipated. He explains that he’s in a ’bejangled headspace’ and breaks things off. This is Adam’s consistent playbook as a sex addict who burns through women. Performative masking of his rapaciousness is enough to disgust his lesbian best friend Emma (Charly Clive), who calls him an emotional terrorist. 

Adam doesn’t heed these warnings. He truly sees himself as a sensitive guy. He drops references to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy—he takes pride in having seen the first movie— has a poster of Cleo From 5 To 7 in his apartment and a dog named after singer Alana Haim. He carries a Mubi tote to the grocery store and reads books centered on women. By being the only male employee at an all-female art gallery he holds the seal of approval from his co-workers, which is only heightened whenever he openly supports his female colleague (Antonia Clarke) to helm an exhibition for hardcore feminist artist Lena Ackerman. If the film had ended after these winking references, it’d be a strong debut. Unfortunately, the final hour is far less developed.

This breezy gender comedy takes a turn when Adam meets lonely Sofia (Jessica Henwick) at a bar. A supposed classics major, she knows his game. He plays along. But she infects him with something that causes a rash on his crotch, his dog to turn on him and women to be insatiably attracted to him. His internal fear of women becomes externalized in their horrific pursuit of him. 

Unfortunately, Schey doesn’t have much to say beyond these frights. He doesn’t push the envelope on the premise, going only so far to suggest incest and phallic jokes. He doesn’t have Adam learn anything about these women, so they still only exist as objects within the film. Even the thriller elements, which are flatly filmed, feel undercooked because they only work on one level. Schey attempts to glob dark magic, biotech science, and satyr mythology onto the frights, but they come too little too late and without any satisfactory payoff.

Thankfully, Edgerton gives dull scenes a bounce through his acute timing, drab jokes life via anticipatory timing, and rote dialogue some sparkle by way of his beguiling sensibility.  Without his performance, Eveybody Wants To F*ck Me would be a film requiring total abstinence.