The director of One Night Only says he gets why people are calling his new romantic comedy the "sex Purge," but he deliberately chose not to make it about that.
The Universal film is now in theaters. It stars Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner as two New Yorkers who meet on the one night per year that premarital sex is legal under what the film calls the United States' "chastity mandate." The setup drew immediate comparisons online to the Blumhouse Purge franchise, which is set in a world where all crime is legal for 12 hours once a year.
Director Will Gluck addressed those comparisons directly in an interview with SlashFilm. "I am very aware of the online discourse about this world and this movie being the 'sex Purge,' and rightfully so," he said. "But I don't want this movie to be about that. And I know I get some blowback going, 'How could you make a movie about this not being about that?' Because I love exploring characters and situations."
Gluck elaborated on his approach to the film's premise. "Whenever us humans get put in situations, no matter how or why the situation happens, we still have to be humans and get through the day. And that's what interests me. So we didn't want it to overwhelm. We wanted to explain it. We didn't want to take a side. We wanted to show both sides, but we wanted it to be about these two people going through this crazy night."
According to Deadline, the Purge franchise has produced five films and a television series since the original premiered in 2013. The Blumhouse series deals with violent crime rather than the social and romantic dynamics at the center of Gluck's film, but the structural parallel between the two concepts has been enough to drive consistent online commentary since One Night Only was announced.
In One Night Only, Turner plays Owen, a recently dumped pizzeria owner, and Barbaro plays Allie, a singer. The two meet during the one night covered by the chastity mandate and the film follows them through the events of that evening.
