Fucktoys is audacious, filthy and frequently fascinating, but its pace and plotting detract from its chaos.

It’s an image that burns itself into your brain: two women squatting over a bathtub, deep in conversation, while a man below them gleefully laps up their urine as part of a bizarre sex act. The moment is shocking, but it is also strangely funny and tender, which is the overarching feeling that defines Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys.

Beneath the shock value of a sex worker’s often outrageous life lies an unexpectedly tender portrait of connection amid the grime. For a while, Fucktoys rides that precarious high beautifully. Then, like its characters wandering Trashtown’s decaying streets, it starts to lose its way.

A curse and a quest

Sriram, making her feature debut as writer, director and star, casts herself as AP, a sex worker who learns she’s cursed by a swamp-dwelling psychic who demands $1,000 and the sacrifice of a baby lamb to lift it. Armed with her moped and a nihilistic sense of humor (for instance, when asked her occupation, she deadpans, “I’m a ho”), AP sets out to scrape together the money.

What follows is a grimy odyssey through Trashtown, USA, where billboards hang half-shredded, buildings rot in real time and every surface seems sticky with sweat and regret.

The film’s world feels handmade, almost tactile. Shot on Super 16mm by cinematographer Cory Fraiman-Lott, Fucktoys has a grainy, analog texture that perfectly suits its title. There’s nothing sleek here; Trashtown is a wasteland stitched together from the detritus of American capitalism. That roughness gives the film its strongest quality: a sense of place so real you can almost smell it (and sort of wish you couldn’t).

For its first stretch, Fucktoys is a riotous romp. Sriram establishes a distinct tone that’s raunchy and absurd, yet strangely human, and the chemistry between her and Sadie Scott’s Danni crackles with danger and affection. When they reunite at a chaotic house party, the film feels alive, daring and unpredictable. Their scenes together hum with chaotic energy and moments of dark humor that make the film’s grotesquerie bearable.

But as the journey continues, that energy dissipates. The narrative starts to drift, bogged down by languid conversations and repeated encounters with psychics who all tell AP the same thing: she’s cursed. The movie becomes as circular as her journey, wandering from one eccentric to the next without much forward motion.

What should feel like an escalating descent into chaos becomes instead a series of lethargic conversations in dingy rooms. Sriram’s world is vivid, but her narrative is less so. Still, there are still flashes of brilliance, like the unacknowledged gag that AP’s bedroom furniture sits pristinely arranged in the middle of an open field, but the film struggles to turn its often-entertaining vignettes into a compelling narrative.

A beautiful mess

The film’s climax arrives when AP takes a job with “The Mechanic,” played by François Arnaud, who is a wealthy client whose meticulously sterile house is the opposite of Trashtown’s filth.

What begins as a moment of intimacy curdles into horror as he insists on putting on a condom “because I don’t know where you’ve been,” reducing AP from lover to commodity in an instant. It’s the film’s sharpest critique of how transactional this world has become, and Sriram doesn’t flinch from its ugliness.

The encounter turns violent, ending in blood and tragedy. AP’s attempt to break her curse by stealing the money and running leads instead to the accidental killing of Danni, her only true connection. It’s a bleak finale that undercuts any promise of catharsis or queer joy.

For a film programmed under the Denver Film Festival’s CinemaQ banner, the lack of tenderness or triumph in its queer storyline left the crowd uneasy. At the screening I attended, applause was polite and brief, which is a rarity at a festival where ovations are almost a given.

There’s no denying Sriram’s talent. As a director, she has a sharp eye for texture and an instinct for the grotesque. As an actor, she plays AP with an appealing mix of toughness and vulnerability. And as a storyteller, she is clearly aiming for something, as evidenced by the strong emotional core and a sharp critique of how women’s bodies are bartered for survival.

Yet for all its visual grit and fearless sexuality, Fucktoys can’t quite sustain its own audacity. Its pacing drags, its tone wobbles and its final moments feel more punishing than profound.

Still, it’s hard not to admire the ambition on display. Fucktoys may be a frustrating film, but it’s never a forgettable one. In its dirtiest moments, when the world feels most absurd and alive, you can glimpse the promise of a filmmaker unafraid to wallow in the muck to find something real.