Critic Reviews

Uproarious. Disturbing. Melancholic. Shrewd. All adjectives that the marketing teams behind Andrew Gaynord’s terrific dark comedy All My Friends Hate Me are welcome to use for promotional purposes.

This movie is uncompromisingly discomfiting, meant to remind people of all those drunken nights where they overreacted to every well-intentioned joke, and woke up choking on the stench of burned bridges.

Andrew Gaynord’s All My Friends Hate Me is an incredibly funny look at social anxiety and a send-up to those risks, mixed with a shot of cringe and a dose of horror.

Somewhat disorienting and riddled with deep-rooted anxiety, fear, and uncertainty that is expertly portrayed, All My Friends Hate Me is a standout.

Dancing on the line between funny and menacing, the ingenious script (by Stourton and Tom Palmer) is a tonal tease, a limbo where every joke has a threatening edge and every “Just kidding!” only increases Pete’s unease.

This enjoyably mean-spirited black comedy set in a grand country house will have you wondering who your real friends are – and what they really think of you.

With its watch-through-your-fingers cringe factor, this is an excellent black comedy of amiss-ness all round. It’s about millennials, their fibs, and their failures.

Combining comedy, cringe and creepiness, All My Friends Hate Me is a short, snappy and seriously entertaining spiral into peer-related paranoia.

At its best, All My Friends shares DNA with both the social dread of Ruben Östlund’s get-togethers and the leylines of Ben Wheatley. Hints of English folk horror — a pitbull tied up near a car, accusing looks at the driven grouse shoot — add to the delicious disquiet. Imagine if Ben Wheatley rebooted Curb Your Enthusiasm.

All My Friends Hate Me digs out a special niche between cringe comedy and horror, as if Stourton, Palmer and director Andrew Gaynord welded an EC Comics plot to an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.