We never know the 16-year-old protagonist (Conor Leach) by any name other than “Sequin” in this short, brisk, and intense feature from first-time director Samuel Van Grinsven. We do know, however, that it is not his real name but an alias he uses on the hookup app that consumes the bulk of his energy and attention, even in school. It refers to his signature outfit, a halter top made of sequins, which he wears for the men he meets. He lives with his father (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), who comes across as kind, lonely, and concerned, but Dad is not the only one Sequin neglects: his peers, particularly the earnest, smitten Tommy (Simon Croker) in his English literature class. 

Sequin’s life, so it seems, stops and starts relative to his sexual encounters. Whenever he is hunched over his phone, his conversations with anonymous partners float up on the screen. The film is driven by the insatiability of his libido, and when he finally meets these men through the app, we enter a new world. 

Here, a pulsing, techno score, or a foreboding drone, takes over the soundscape. Sometimes the sound cuts out altogether, and we see the men moving in slow motion, with close-ups on their faces, their skin, and the echoing sound of their fevered breathing. There is also a sinister quality to these encounters. The middle-aged men are often filmed to look forbidding, backlit as they gaze out of a window in a high-rise apartment, or (as in the titular “Blue Room,” where an anonymous, invite-only sex party occurs) dangerously virile, mentally undressing the young man before them with their aggressive gaze. The palpability of this atmosphere lingers throughout most of the film. 

These sequences are the film’s most highly wrought aspect, a mix of eroticism and danger, commanding our attention, though they lack nuance. It is not much of an overstatement to say that these scenes are like watching a music video—they are mostly atmospheric and the characters are, almost, one-dimensional as though they are there to accompany the score. 

Still, the director’s emphasis on ambiance does not conceal shortcomings in the script. The plot takes off when Sequin meets a beautiful stranger (Samuel Barrie) at the sex party, which makes him break his resolve that his sex life be limited to touch-and-go encounters. This occurs just as a 45-year-old man (Ed Wightman) becomes dangerously obsessed with him. Sequin makes a few rash decisions and gets in over his head, and the plot traces a line from danger to safety, from supposedly unhealthy habits to conventionally healthy ones, yet the writing does not make this very standard dramatic arc convincing. 

Every character is both under-explored and under-explained, reduced to a few bullet points, and the story is marked by too-convenient turns (a kind drag queen just happens to offer Sequin shelter when things get dangerous). Perhaps the most heavy-handed aspect is the off-screen English teacher giving a lecture on (guess what?) desire. 

The actors are, thankfully, capable of conveying more emotional life than the script allows them, and Leach, a newcomer with no visible self-consciousness, believably brings to life both emotional reticence and erotic longing. When the focus shifts from the overemphasized atmosphere to interactions between him and Simon Croker, the results are poignant and spontaneous by comparison. Furthermore, even if the tone can be unrelentingly sinister, the film does not judge its young protagonist for his actions.