Tribeca 2021 Review: All My Friends Hate Me

All My Friends Hate Me (2021) is a British black comedy. It was written by Tom Palmer, and Tom Stourton, and directed by Andrew Gaynord.

Pete (Tom Stourton) is a dude who is about to have a birthday. He lives in England with his girlfriend Sonia (Charly Clive). Pete has some old friends from university that he hasn’t seen since they graduated a few years back who have invited him out to the country for a birthday celebration. George (Joshua McGuire) will be hosting it in his father’s lavish manor. Also ion attendance are Pete’s other friends Fig (Georgina Campbell), who is also George’s significant other, posh cokehead Archie (Graham Dixon), and Claire (Antonia Clarke), who was Pete’s girlfriend prior to his relationship with Sonia.

Prior to leaving, it is established that while Sonia is unable to attend the party from the outset, Pete is to go ahead without her, and she will arrive later in the weekend. Pete expresses some hesitation, as his peer group was apparently far more fiduciarily affluent than he, however, as Pete was the king of the party back in their uni days, he grabs his stuff and heads out into the rural, English countryside.

Almost immediately things begins to go awry for Pete. He quickly gets lost on the country backroads, and has some odd and disturbing run-ins with some local yokels. Then, when he arrives at the estate, nobody is there to greet him. At least, not at first. When his friends finally do show up, they have a stranger in tow that they all seem quite fond of. Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns) is, according to Pete’s pals, a local whom they met at the pub. However, Harry was so much fun that the group all decided to bring him back to the estate to be a part of the birthday celebration.

Immediately, Pete doesn’t like Harry, and is apprehensive about him being there. And it seems like Pete’s intuition may be correct… at first. Is something really up with Harry? And why are Pete’s friends acting so weird? As the weekend progresses, the train begins going off the rails, and seems headed for ultimate disaster. That is, unless Pete can get to the bottom of things.

All My Friends Hate Me is likely to be a very polarizing film. However, I can tell you, with great confidence that I loved it. This movie will draw criticism from those who follow the plot closely, and then are bothered by the way it wraps up. I was not one of those people. Don’t worry though, I ain’t spoiling anything.

One very important thing I’ve learned about movies in my time on this planet is that is is much easier to come up with an enticing setup than it is to come up with a quality payoff. The television series The X-Files (1993-2002) dealt with this conundrum masterfully, finding a way to hook you in the beginning of the episode with it’s irresistible mystery, and leave you satisfied at its conclusion, despite having provided you with no definitive answers.

As All My Friends Hate Me progressed, I became more and more interested in solving the mystery that the film sets up. Each clue that gets dropped is more and more salacious, making my need to know what was really going on continually intensify. However, as the film drew nearer to its end, I began to realize that whatever revelations occurred, they were not going to be as straightforward as I had previously hoped.

But at that point, I didn’t care. The film had already done its job in impressing me tremendously. First off, this film it superlative at building, and maintaining suspense and paranoia. I couldn’t take my eyes off this thing for one single frame. It had me paying attention to every word every character uttered, and every occurrence that transpired, as if this was an episode of Lost (2004-2010). I genuinely believed that I might figure it out prior to the film’s conclusion. I was wrong.

Second, the way this film dealt with insecurity, anxiety, and self-doubt was one of the accurate depictions I have ever seen. No shit, Pete might not have looked like me, but I absolutely felt like I was watching myself on screen. Pete’s awkwardness, his inability to relax, even among his “friends”, the paranoia that I’m secretly hated, or that somehow every word I utter or action I undertake will end up a major faux-pas, etc., are things I experience in real life way more than I would prefer.

But it isn’t as simple as the accuracy of the depiction of self-doubt, but the way in which it is the true focus of the film, yet still completely yields to the prevailing narrative. A lot of viewers will likely get swept up in the story that is on the surface, and might not key in to the subtext. Not to harp too much on this whole “ending” thing, but the film will reward those who are aware of the separate levels this movie is operating on.

The acting in this film is also very good. All of the characters tread the lines between what is perceived and what is real with laudable tenacity. Pete for example flagellates back and forth between being a victim deserving of our sympathy, and a complete douche. I was somehow unsurprised at the conclusion to discover that Tom Stourton co-wrote this thing. His performance is so good, I almost think this thing is practically autobiographical.

I’m way too stupid to be able to fully articulate why this movie was so goo and so impressive to me in the way that an academic, or someone who has been trained how to write about film could. All I can do is tell you that this movie was totally rad, and on a number of levels. It was almost like a Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-) movie, only with no jokes.

At times it reminded me of a number of films that I hold in high regard. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999), Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971), The House of the Devil (Ti West, 2009), and Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) were all brought to mind at one point or another. I don’t mean to put this film on the same level as those others, at least not yet. But it was really nice to watch a film that felt genuinely inspired by these films and their respective filmmakers, rather than one that just lifts, steals, and borrows from them.

So there you have it. I can’t really say much more about this film, other than I thought it was a magnificent job from a director who has just turned in his first feature. It helps that he had a strong script from which to work. All My Friends Hate Me is not only a mantra I have repeated to myself ad-nauseum far too many times in my life, it might also be the best narrative feature to come out of Tribeca this year. Can’t wait for this one to find distribution and start making some waves!