Watford’s not ready: How cinemagoers are coping with Poor Things’ freaky sex scenes

One of the most talked-about films in recent months is finally in UK cinemas, with British audiences able to watch for themselves the wildly unpredictable and explicit spectacle of Poor Things.

And with descriptions like ‘nightmarish’ and ‘a surreal gothic horror cheese dream’ as cinemagoers approached cinemas with caution, it appeared no-one knew quite what they’d let themselves in for.

As one friend told me, she and her husband saw Poor Things in a screening of just six people – including them – where a woman chatting to them afterwards said: ‘Great film, but I’m not sure Watford is ready for it.’

Well, quite.

A darling of awards season, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest movie has been grabbing headlines since September, when its world premiere at Venice Film Festival reportedly saw some viewers bolting for the door over its raunchy content.

Leading lady Emma Stone, 34, was also dubbed ‘one of cinema’s horniest legends’ for her turn by Vulture, which sees her attempt to have sex with an apple by pushing it up what she terms her ‘hairy business’.

One graphic scene showing her character Bella Baxter teaching two young boys how to have sex while working as a prostitute even had to be re-cut in order for the film to secure release in the UK.

Many people were scandalised by Saltburn’s eyebrow-raising scenes when the Barry Keoghan film hit Amazon Prime Video over the Christmas period – especially if they were settling down to watch what they thought was some gentle family viewing.

However, Saltburn’s by-now infamous bathwater scene, full-frontal naked dancing and light bit of grave desecration perhaps pale in comparison given what Poor Things offers to audiences.

‘Wow, just wow. Also makes Saltburn look positively prudish,’ tweeted @IamHappyToast on X earlier this week.

Indeed, Bella – who is a young woman brought back to life with the mind of a baby by the brilliant but unorthodox scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) – at one point takes off on a whirlwind trip across Europe with the caddish Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), which involves montages of their athletic sex sessions – or ‘furious jumping’, as she calls it.

Wedderburn also boasts at the end of one scene that she has been ‘thrice f**ked by the very best’, while Bella is also keen on having as much of his ‘tongue-play’ as she can.

‘Watching Poor Things is like being in the middle of the most surreal Victorian gothic horror cheese dream, but with a soul, and I am all for it,’ announced Chris McBride on X.

Others shared their experience both before and after seeing the film.

‘Now Watching: #PoorThings Not sure what I’m letting myself in for… ‘ admitted Luke Stapley before returning full of wonderment to proclaim the film a ‘wholly original, outrageously unorthodox, and wildly uncompromised vision’.

‘Its beautiful cinematography and production design transport you to an ethereal alternate dimension of depravity and perversion,’ he added, while praising Stone’s best-ever performance’ which ensured Bella Baxter ‘will be a cinematic icon’.

‘Wow, what a film! At the start I was thinking, I’m not sure I’m going to like this. By the end, I thought it was bloody amazing,’ admitted @alanmuttley1066 on the platform.

Alluding to its more adult nature, Helen Tope commented: ‘Okay. So seeing #PoorThings at 10 in the morning was definitely a CHOICE.’

Meanwhile user Kels delightedly revealed: ‘My favorite thing about #PoorThings was how quotable it was.’

Stone has also defended how far the film goes with its intimate scenes as she explained that sex was ‘obviously a huge part of her experience and her growth, as it is, I think, for most people in life’.

‘One of the things we talked about from very early on, that I thought was extremely important, was that Bella is completely free and without shame about her body. She doesn’t know to be embarrassed by these things, or to cover things up, or not dive into the full experience when it comes to anything,’ she told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row.

‘So, for the camera to sort of shy away from that, or to say, “Okay, well, we’ll just cut all of this out because our society functions in a particular way” … it felt like a lack of being honest about who Bella is and what she feels.’

The star also insisted that she was ‘not a person that just wants to be naked all the time, but I am someone who wants to honour the character as fully as I possibly can’.

‘That’s part of her journey so who am I to say that should be shameful?’

Poor Things is in UK cinemas now.

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