BLUE FILM (2025)

Starring Kieron Moore and Reed Birney.

Screenplay by Elliot Tuttle.

Directed by Elliot Tuttle.

Distributed by Obscured Releasing. 85 minutes. Not Rated.

Just from the title Blue Film, you tend to expect a seedy, provocative, highly-sexualized film. While all of those aspects are included in this film, this film is much deeper and more disturbing than you may expect. There is a lot of talk about sex, but while there is some graphic sexual activity, most of it is done slightly off-camera.

While sex plays a big part in the story, it is in no way sentimentalized. The eroticism in Blue Film is sordid, sad, ugly, and almost an afterthought. In fact, the two characters here neither seem to particularly like sexuality – it is a compulsion, an occupation or a power trip, not something that either one seems to enjoy.

Strangely enough, it is more about emotional and personal exposure than it is about carnal knowledge. It is an oddly philosophical film, looking at hot-button issues like religion, abuse, pedophilia, substance abuse, bullying, homophobia, pornography, incarceration, violence, and the search for redemption.

It can be an uncomfortable thing to watch. Extremely uncomfortable in several parts. And yet at the same time it is rather fascinating. These are not people you’d want to meet in real life, but both share much deeper self-awareness and empathy than you may expect.

When I was in college, a writing professor said that there are no more difficult stories to tell than those which have limited characters and settings, because you can’t hide or distract. Everything is happening right out front, so you have to be certain that what they are doing and what you are saying is meaningful.

Blue Film has only two characters and essentially takes place in a single setting – although there is a brief preface which takes place on a video stream. It thrusts together two very problematic characters and forces them to come to deal with each other and perhaps come to an understanding.

We first meet Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore), a ripped fetish cam boy who caters to a gay audience, but bullies and humiliates his fans for their homosexuality and their lust for him. He is in the middle of a camshow in which he teases and belittles his watchers and hits them up for money. He tells of a meeting he is having later that day with a man who has liquidated his assets to spend $50,000 for a night with Aaron.

That meeting is the subject of the rest of the film. You realize things are off-kilter from the very beginning – the man is wearing a ski-mask and interviews Aaron, asking him invasive personal questions on camera. Then it turns out that the man calls Aaron on his biographical falsehoods, knowing where he really was from and his real name.

It turns out that the man is Hank (Reed Birney), a former high-school teacher who had once taught Aaron in school back in Maine, and soon afterwards was fired for the intended sexual abuse of a student who was 12-year-old boy. Hank insists that he never actually went through with it – he claimed he let the boy go – and they both agree that Hank was never inappropriate with Aaron. However, it turns out that he was somewhat obsessed with Aaron as a boy and was in love with him even back then.

So when he discovered Aaron’s camshow, he was fascinated by how the sweet, shy boy he once knew grew into the angry, aggressive alpha male he has become online. So the two men talk about who they were then and now, opening up in ways neither one is totally comfortable with. Secrets come out slowly, but eventually the confessional experience does contribute to the growth and understandings of both men.

Reed Birney, who had made a similarly insular film a few years ago with Mass (that film was essentially four characters, one setting and the similarly hot-button issue of school shootings), is becoming a pro at this kind of high intensity one-on-one filmmaking.

British actor Moore – who I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before, but who has starred in the TV series Vampire Academy and Code of Silence – is something of a revelation in this emotionally tricky and dangerously exposed role. I’m interested to see what he does next. Both actors show stunning vulnerability in their roles, which seem off-putting, at least on the surface.

Blue Film has been playing the film festival circuit for much of the past year, including a successful showing at last year’s Philadelphia Film Festival. After the buzz at the PFF and others, it has started slowly opening around the country this month, coming to Philadelphia starting May 22.

Blue Film isn’t an easy sit, nor is it meant to be. But in its tight focus, its moral murk, and its refusal to offer tidy catharsis, it becomes something unexpectedly resonant. Writer/director Elliot Tuttle and his actors dig past provocation to find bruised humanity, and the result lingers longer than many films with ten times the scale. It’s a small movie with big, unsettling questions, and it earns every one of them.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 22, 2026.