Jonathan Schey’s Everybody Wants to F*ck Me is the kind of film that seems determined to make you laugh before making you question exactly why you’re laughing. What begins as a filthy comedy about modern dating gradually mutates into something darker, stranger and considerably more uncomfortable.
Taron Egerton plays Adam, a London gallery worker who has perfected the art of appearing to be a “nice guy”. He reads the right books, says the right things, listens attentively and knows exactly how to make women feel special. The catch is that Adam’s entire personality seems carefully constructed around being seen as a decent bloke, while his actual behaviour tells a rather different story.
His best mate Emma (Charly Clive) knows the routine, but Adam remains convinced he is doing nothing particularly wrong. Then he meets Sofia (Jessica Henwick), a woman who sees through him almost immediately. Naturally, this makes him even more interested.
After a strange encounter between the pair, Adam wakes up to discover that women suddenly cannot get enough of him. What initially sounds like the ultimate fantasy quickly becomes a nightmare, as the attention becomes invasive, frightening and completely beyond his control.
That reversal is where Schey finds most of the film’s best material. Adam has spent years chasing attention, only to discover how terrifying that attention can become when you have no say in it. The joke is obvious, but Schey keeps finding new ways to push it into increasingly uncomfortable territory.
The film’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. Everybody Wants to F*ck Me is much more interested in being outrageous than delivering a perfectly rounded examination of toxic masculinity. There are some genuinely sharp observations about dating culture, love bombing and the difference between being a good person and simply wanting everyone to think you are one. But the film occasionally gets so carried away with its own absurdity that those ideas are left sitting in the background.
Still, the comedy mostly lands. Schey has a very British sense of humour, with plenty of dry one-liners, awkward situations and moments that make you wonder whether you should be laughing at all. The film also takes a surprisingly effective detour into horror, using Adam’s sudden popularity to turn something he desperately wanted into something genuinely threatening.
Egerton is excellent throughout. He has the charm to make Adam believable as someone women would actually fall for, while also giving him enough insecurity and cluelessness to stop him becoming a one-dimensional villain. He commits completely to the ridiculousness of the material, which is essential because the film goes to some seriously unhinged places.
Henwick is equally good as Sofia, bringing an icy confidence that immediately throws Adam off balance. Clive gets some of the film’s best moments as Emma, the friend who has known Adam long enough to see exactly what everyone else is dealing with.
If there is a frustration here, it is that the film occasionally feels like it has a much sharper movie hiding inside it. The premise could have dug considerably deeper into the female experience of modern dating and the damage caused by performative niceness. Instead, Schey usually chooses the bigger joke, the stranger twist or the next opportunity to make the audience squirm.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Everybody Wants to F*ck Me is messy and provocative, but it is rarely dull. It knows exactly how ridiculous its central premise is and throws itself into it without hesitation. The result is a darkly funny, surprisingly nasty little horror-comedy that won’t work for everyone, but is certainly difficult to forget.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Everybody Wants to F*ck Me is screening as part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, running between September 10th and 20th, 2026. For more information, head to the official site here.
