Film Review — All My Friends Hate Me
★★★★☆
Reuniting in the countryside for his birthday, Pete begins to suspect his old university friends might harbour a grudge against him.
There’s a visual fairly early on where the protagonist struggles to decide if he should button up his shirt. Fully buttoned looks a little too formal, but too many unfastened buttons look too relaxed. What would his friends think? I felt that moment, one of many where this stopped feeling like a film and became more of an uncomfortable reference to the paranoia of my youth.
I have a strong feeling this is going to hit a lot of millennial Brits in much the same way. Co-written by comedian duo Toms Palmer and Stourton, the latter of whom also stars, All My Friends Hate Me is hideously relatable in its exploration of social anxiety whilst also touching on past transgressions, class divide, and the pains of growing up.
Those who enjoyed watching shows like The Inbetweeners but can’t publicly say they did now due to our culture’s radically shifted moral north star will probably find an awful lot to relate to here.
Good horror doesn’t necessarily need blood and gore to be effective. Here the ill feeling comes from the slow-build paranoia, the wincing exchanges and the slight facial expressions that whipped my brain into an ugly conspiratorial frenzy.
It might be a little hard for non-UK viewers to fully appreciate; we do have a very dry and subjective sense of humour. But beneath the bird shoots and toffs lies a palpable and unnerving passive-aggressive energy that I imagine will be felt universally.
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