Armie Hammer is Peak Hot in ‘Wounds,’ But Also Covered in Bugs

Wounds, a new Hulu horror film that will release on the streaming service this Friday after premiering at Sundance in January, has both an irresistible draw and a repulsive deterrent: Armie Hammer is very hot in it, but he’s also sometimes covered in creepy-crawly bugs. You see my dilemma here.

Wounds is based on the novella The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud. The adaptation was written and directed by British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari, whose critically-acclaimed 2016 horror film, Under the Shadow was a Netflix release. In Wounds, Hammer stars as a down-to-earth bartender named Will who isn’t concerned by the riff-raff who populate his New Orleans bar. When a tough-guy regular named Eric (Brad William Henke) gets into a bar fight and ends up with a slashed open cheek from a broken bottle, Will takes it in stride. He’s content with his life: a college dropout who gets rejected by his girlfriend Carrie (Dakota Johnson) when he crawls into bed late at night. He compensates by flirting with his drinking buddy Alicia (Zazie Beetz) instead, even though she has her own boyfriend, Jeffrey (Karl Glusman).

But one night, a group of teens leaves behind a phone at the bar, and Will’s life starts to fall apart. Weird stuff starts happening. It’s never really explained what exactly that weird stuff is, but it involves texts of gruesome body horror videos, gaping flesh wounds, and phones turning into disgusting cockroaches.

That the plot of Wounds is so woefully unclear should probably bother me more, but it doesn’t. Armie Hammer is just so hot in this film, you guys! He wears tiny tee shirts (including a Morgus the Magnificent tee shirt, in a nod to the horror host) and he’s all charming and self-assured, slinging beers with an easy-going smile. He knows how hot he is, and is kind of an asshole about it, which—I hate to say it—makes him hotter. (Please note for the record, fellas, that this personality trait is charming in movies only, not in real life.) It helps that Hammer has effortless chemistry with Zazie Beetz, who is also very sexy and charming. She’s the cool girl rocking great braids and spaghetti-strap tops who’s always down for another beer—until she isn’t, to Will’s distress. Then there’s the always-gorgeous Dakota Johnson, who doesn’t get much of a role, but does spend much of the film in her underwear. Basically, everyone in this movie is super hot, and I was having a great time.

But then there were a bunch of gross bugs on the screen, and I was not having a great time anymore. I can forgive a flimsy plot and body horror in the face of hot people with chemistry, but cockroaches? Please, god, no. If you, like me, live in a terrible city apartment where you just know there are cockroaches and silverfish and other horrifying invertebrates living in your walls—waiting for you to turn off the lights so they can come out and do gross bug stuff—Wounds is going to be a tough watch. At first, the bug stuff starts off small: A cockroach crawling on a bottle of gin, and another scurrying out of sight in Will’s apartment. Then it gets much, much worse. There are so many bugs. At one point there are hundreds of them on Armie Hammer, crawling up his sleeve while he’s driving. He responds, quite reasonably, by ripping his shirt off, which would have been nice, had I not been covering my eyes trying not to look at the bugs.

In the end, Hammer’s hotness (and his performance as a man slowly losing his grip on his sanity) won me over, despite the unwelcome creepy-crawly factor in Wounds. It’s hard to call it a good movie—the story really doesn’t go anywhere—but I enjoyed it immensely nonetheless. Sometimes movies are just fun! Especially when there are hot people with chemistry in them! It doesn’t hurt that, as a streaming film, the fast-forward button is right there. Still, it’s up to you whether Armie Hammer’s shoulders and arms are worth a braving a thousand tiny legs moving in ways legs definitely should not move. Choose wisely.

Wounds will stream on Hulu in the U.S. and on Netflix internationally on October 18.

Watch Wounds on Hulu