Chemsex: documentary 'shocking but important'

A new documentary about the rising phenomenon of risky, drug-fuelled sex binges in the gay community, Chemsex is released in UK cinemas today. It's a disturbing yet valuable investigation of an important issue, say critics.

'Chemsex' means the use of drugs during sexual activity and most often refers to gay group sex that can last for days. The increasingly common phenomenon, aided by apps like Grindr, has led to a rise in drug addiction and HIV among young and vulnerable men in the UK.

Chemsex, the new documentary from Vice, directed by William Fairman and Max Gogarty, focuses on the London gay community's response to the "healthcare emergency", in particular work being done at a NHS sexual health clinic in Soho.

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It also interviews casualties of the chemsex scene, such as a city worker who lost his job and turned to prostitution to pay for his drug habit.

Critics have praised the film for its non-sensationalist approach to a difficult subject.

"Prurient peepshow value is thankfully thin on the ground in this harrowing documentary about a gay subculture," says Tim Robey in the Daily Telegraph.

The directors take "a serious-minded approach to the psychological scars this behaviour both masks and worsens", he adds.

It's a subject that could lend itself to "salacious tabloid scaremongering", says Robey, but the filmmakers' chief concern is for the lives already affected, not for a mainstream determined to steer well clear.

It's a serious, shocking and "occasionally stomach-churning" film investigation, says Kate Muir in The Times. There are grim scenes of men shooting up, or "slamming", before orgies coupled with "bracing and moving confessions from addicts".

The extent of the problem is never made quite clear by the film, adds Muir, "but as a piece of investigative journalism it deserves attention".

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian agrees that the scale of the problem and how many people are affected is never properly explored. Has the film magnified an issue of urban hedonism that is minor compared to larger issues of homophobia or inequality?

The directors do make a convincing case that this is important, revealing a "regressive, infantilised culture that is taking young gay men away from openness and towards furtive addiction", says Bradshaw. It's "a tough watch, but a valuable one".

Yet, while this timely investigation may have begun in a spirit of serious and sensitive concern, the attention-grabbing outcome risks becoming grist to the salacious tabloid media mill, says Charles Gant on Screen Daily.

The challenge for this documentary, says Gant, is to avoid the fate of being "the controversial film everybody needs to know about, but not necessarily see".