The trailer had shades of When Harry Met Sally. Two pretty young people after hours in a New York pizza joint, bantering up a storm, teasingly quizzing each other on their favorite part of sex. Both of them were looking for a random hook-up, but now they’re building a genuine connection.
Blink and you might miss the single line that explains why this particular night is special: It’s the only 12 hours of the year when the government doesn’t jail unmarried people for having sex.
Say … what? Who got dystopia in my rom-com? I had to see what director Will Gluck (Anyone but You) and screenwriter Travis Braun would make of this premise.
The deal
Three years ago, Congress passed the Chastity Mandate. Now, thanks to innovations from Big Pharma, everyone bears a government tattoo that records spikes in their dopamine levels. When unmarried people experience said spikes together, the cops arrest them for illegal sex. Somehow the tattoo even detects condom use, which is mandatory on the one night of the year when the mandate is lifted.
Pizza joint owner Owen (Callum Turner) is excited to spend Exemption Night with his girlfriend (Maya Hawke) when she drops a bombshell: She’d prefer a little variety this year. An aggrieved Owen sets out to find his own adventure in the carnivalesque streets, where everyone’s on the make and condoms are selling out at $200 a pop.
Owen runs (literally) into Allie (Monica Barbaro), a singleton singer who’s on her own hunt, but he makes an iffy first impression by vomiting on her shoes. Later, they collide again and become reluctant allies in their increasingly desperate quest for the perfect partner. Is 12 hours long enough for two attractive strangers to realize that what they seek is right in front of them?
Will you like it?
Let’s just say it: “The Purge but for sex” is a terrible idea for a rom-com. Nothing kills a flirty buzz like a fascist regime that removes citizens’ bodily autonomy. Moreover, the world shown in the film strains credibility in every way: Just three years after this mandate, New Yorkers are partying in the streets? Aside from a few window signs and a protest concert, no one appears to be resisting?
You could argue that the issue stays off-screen for genre reasons — this movie is about sexy banter and two people falling in love! Here’s the problem: The romantic intimacy of the trailer is just a sliver of One Night Only’s final third.
Most of the run time is composed of Owen’s and Allie’s zany pratfalls as they work their way through inappropriate partners, crashing an exclusive party, and landing in the police station and hospital along the way. Think Adventures in Babysitting, only it’s about fornication under fascism, and the dialogue and gags are rarely worth more than a chuckle. Among the film’s other sins, a randy 12-year-old gets way too many punch lines.
Barbaro, Oscar-nominated for A Complete Unknown, shows her comedic talent here, using her velvety voice and wry manner to convey Allie’s ongoing mortification at the meat-market situation. Turner is fine, too, but their bland dialogue serves only to make us long for the heyday of screwball meet-cutes.
I found myself increasingly more interested in the other movie that seems to be trapped inside One Night Only: an Idiocracy-like satire struggling to escape the rom-com trappings. Take minor characters’ flailing attempts to explain how the mandate passed in the first place. Clearly, it’s unpopular (at least in Manhattan), but everyone blames someone else for this travesty of democracy, from “single-issue voters” to the classic “Thanks, Obama.” People not only capitulate to the new status quo but also rush to commercialize it, touting their surge pricing for condoms, haircuts and other essential goods on Exemption Night.
Meanwhile, one of the movie’s running jokes is Allie’s job singing jingles for pharmaceutical ads, turning words like “psoriasis” into soulful warbles that sound right at home on the film’s soundtrack. One of those ads figures largely in the romantic climax, making us wonder if the whole movie could double as a PSA for chastity under its imaginary regime.
Being very charitable, one might ascribe a stealth message to One Night Only: Consumer society has lulled Americans into a complacency where they can’t even imagine what freedom or responsibility means in the real world. At one point, Owen suggests the pair defy the mandate by choosing not to have sex in the allotted window. It’s a statement about as impressive as downvoting a political post — the gesture of someone who’s already given up on changing the system. If the government does come for free love, let’s hope it has better defenders than this movie.
If you like this, try…
The Purge: Anarchy (2014; rentable): The clear inspiration for One Night Only is the Purge horror series, in which murder is legal for one night a year. Starting with this sequel to the lackluster original, they’re solid B-movies with a surprising amount of political subtext.
The Binge (2020; Disney+, Hulu): The Purge was popular enough to spawn this parody in which Americans get just one night a year to indulge in drugs and alcohol.
Before Sunrise (1995; Roku Channel, Tubi, rentable): But if all you really want is to watch two strangers fall in love over the course of one magical night, go back to basics with Richard Linklater’s drama, which has all the chemistry and meaningful conversation that One Night Only is missing.
This article appears in August 12 • 2026.
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