One Night Only, 2026.
Directed by Will Gluck.
Starring Monica Barbaro, Callum Turner, Maya Hawke, Julia Fox, Molly Ringwald, LeVar Burton, Okieriete Onaodowan, Este Haim, Ziwe, King Princess, Ben Marshall, Nicholas Braun, Quintessa Swindell, Michelle Hurd, Veronika Slowikowska, Charlie Gillespie, Kam Patterson, Pete Davidson, Bobby Cannavale, Jay Ellis, Craig ‘Radio Man’ Castaldo, and Grace Dumdaw.
SYNOPSIS:
Two love-starved strangers crash into each other on the one night of the year when single people are allowed to have sex.
There isn’t a single scene in director Will Gluck’s high-concept romantic comedy One Night Only that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers regarding this world-building and these characters. That begins with the premise that, three years ago, Congress passed “the mandate”, effectively outlawing premarital sex for single individuals except for the titular evening. Apparently, in Travis Braun’s screenplay, this has been accepted without much of a fight and mostly abided by in America no less, a country that will lose its goddamn minds the second anyone suggests gun reform and a society that couldn’t even unite to mask during a pandemic with millions of lives on the line.
Here, single men and women look forward to the one night a year they can have sex as if it were just another holiday, as if no bodily agency was taken away, as if all of this is normal. It’s not the premise of the film that’s the problem; it’s the way everyone behaves here, which also appears to be pushing some regressive, conservative-coded notion that sex is evil and that it’s wrong to engage in intercourse unless you know someone’s life story, or how they like their pizza and take their coffee. Not only do the characters inhabit a world of brainwashing, but the film itself is also intent on doing that as well (the characters don’t necessarily come to believe that sex out of wedlock is wrong, but they might as well go that far). To that point, nothing here feels remotely convincing or believable.
Government and 24-hour news cycles peddle that STDs, teen pregnancies, and childbirth rates have drastically decreased across those three years, a notion that will have anyone with a brain calling “bullshit” out loud in the theater or at TV screens. Human beings (with the exception of asexual people, of course) love sex, and no biogenic alarm that goes off (it is a tattoo of someone’s choosing that is green if they are married or turns that color if they are single on this night, and is red otherwise) during unapproved sex acts is going to prevent that, and more or less result in whatever fantasyland is depicted here. Yes, this is a movie, but it’s also not unreasonable to chalk less childbirth up to some pockets of civilization mindful of overpopulation, climate change, and younger generations seemingly disinterested in sex (there is a much better film in theaters confronting that in I Want Your Sex).
By the world’s own rules, teenagers don’t receive a tattoo until they are 18, so it’s a stretch to say it is the reason for lower pregnancy rates as a whole. Aside from a young smart-ass boy who exists as comic relief, annoying a babysitter staying over for a huge payday (now that’s a small amusing detail about the world that makes sense, such as the prices of condoms inflating much like candy around Valentine’s Day), there are no teenagers here, because the filmmakers don’t actually care about engaging with whatever they purport. There also aren’t any LGBTQ individuals here for long, as one supporting character reveals they have found workarounds to heteronormative laws. Another tech-bro character says he is working on a program to mess with the biogenic device so it doesn’t act up when people in the red start getting frisky, but again, let’s be real, a solution to that would have been cracked within weeks (and most likely used with malicious intent).
Nevertheless, the story follows Monica Barbaro’s struggling aspiring singer Allie and Callum Turner’s pizzeria-owning Owen, each stumbling into escapades on their own (each fumbled situation doubling as a half-baked opportunity to provide more insight into those living in this world and the rules) and typically bumping back into one another after failing to get laid. Something is wrong when anyone in the theater could be considered more of a sex magnet than a narrative involving Hollywood stars (regardless of sexual orientation, both leads are impossibly attractive and will have viewers tuning out occasional bits of dialogue; okay, that’s also the movie’s fault too). Aside from a scene of some property damage and a scam that leaves one character tied to a tree, there isn’t much fun here either.
The fact that the film earned the nickname “The Sex Purge” prior to its release and contains no actual sex is mind-blowing. It is baffling that a pair of creatives could come up with this concept and entirely misunderstand their own assignment. This isn’t a frustration of wanting the film to be something else, but rather one of being left aghast as to how these filmmakers perceive the act of sex. They must hate it. Its tone is also at odds with itself, desperately trying to bustle up background environments with randoms who can’t keep their hands off one another, sometimes groping one another outside, but is too cowardly to actually be a sex comedy. What passes for humor here involves something going wrong that prevents one of the protagonists from either having or wanting sex.
Someone on social media suggested that, if there were to be a movie with this concept, it should be about a horny couple rebelling against this system. After giving One Night Only a chance and sitting through to its conclusion, that is something to get behind. At one point, this film has Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner cheekily insulting each other’s looks; it’s the usual romantic comedy cliché where they don’t want to admit they are into each other, but still, what the actual hell are we doing here?
There is also something odorously regressive about their individual arcs, in that Owen, upset that his significant other (Maya Hawke) wants to sleep with someone else on this night, ends up on the usual “fun” path of trying to loosen up and potentially find real love (apparently these filmmakers also have an ax to grind against polyamorous experimentation), although still unsure about his choices (confoundingly, his character seems unfazed by the mandate in general until others, including his parents, encourage him to put himself out there) whereas Allie remains fixated on sex as an act sacredly reserved for in-depth trust and connection following some experiences getting ghosted after this night.
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To play devil’s advocate, sure, it is admittedly sweet that she wants her next sexual partner to potentially be her life partner, but not at the expense of a story downplaying fascism and going as far as considering that the mandate is indeed for the greater good. It’s a sour, sour pill to swallow that undoes the occasionally entertaining bit and effective enough push/pull chemistry between Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner. One Night Only strands them there, taking a confused stand against sex while making a backward statement about love.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
