SXSW 2025 Review: FUCKTOYS, A Filth-filled Odyssey Though A Punk Rock Wonderland
A sometime sex worker longs for love in director/writer/star Annapurna Sriram’s chaotic debut feature film, Fucktoys.
We meet AP (Sriram) mid-tarot reading, sitting in the middle of a swamp, listening to the wisdom of a psychic played by iconic rapper, Big Freedia. Desperate to make a positive turn in her life, AP begs for a solution to her overall ills, to which the tarot woman immediately shoots back: it’s gonna be $1,000 and she’s going to have to slit the throat of a lamb. In possession of neither a lamb, nor $1,000, AP now has a quest, and she will not be denied.
Sriram may be familiar to viewers from her appearances in Billions or The Blacklist, but she’s mostly flown under the radar working as an actor on indie shorts until now. With Fucktoys, she announces herself boldly as a multi-hyphenate – a role which earned her an award from the SXSW narrative features jury – writer, star, and director. Not too shabby for a woman stepping behind the camera for the very first time.
AP’s mission leads her through her home turf, Trashtown, USA, an amalgam largely comprised of southern Louisiana with a dash of Los Angeles. This is the kind of place where the strip joints outnumber the elementary schools, and every block offers a new and exciting vice to explore.
Hazmat suited maintenance men clean up the streets while the police force bust up perfectly peaceful house parties dressed head-to-toe in bondage gear. For AP and her best friend Danni (Sadie Scott), this is just a Tuesday, but her mission is set, and AP won’t rest until she finds a way to dispel this bad juju.
Shot in glorious 16mm, Fucktoys is as much an aesthetic fuck-you to indie film decorum as it is a moral one. The frame shimmers with beautiful film grain, and colors burst off the screen, reaching out to the audience and pulling them into its wildly anarchic world. The punk rock soundtrack propels the action forward, never allowing the viewer time to rest. If AP can’t rest, why should we? There’s a mission to conquer!
Vulgar, disjointed, and unrelentingly energetic, Fucktoys evokes the best parts of John Waters, Greg Araki, and early ‘90s Jarmusch in a single, romantic, messed-up narrative. Sriram’s vision is hectic, but the result is impressive; a singular film, committed to celluloid forever, a time capsule of my version of heaven. An inclusive space for fucked up freaks and sex positive weirdos to live their best lives, all while AP seeks out her own. Fucktoys is its own dystopian paradise, and I want to live in the filth with everyone in Trashtown, because they look they’re having a hell of a time.
