All My Friends Hate Me (2021 | UK | 93 minutes | Andrew Gaynord)
Have you ever had one of those evenings with friends where the vibe feels off, and you can’t tell if it’s just in your head or whether maybe, actually, all your friends secretly wish you weren’t there?
That’s what All My Friends Hate Me is about. Pete (Tom Stourton) has been away for several years working at a refugee camp, and has met and decided he wants to marry his girlfriend, Sonia (Charly Clive). Back home now in England, Pete’s old group of “posh” friends from university has invited him out for a weekend to celebrate his 31st birthday at a country estate owned by the family of group member George (Joshua McGuire, who I recognized as Angus from the Netflix show Lovesick). But Pete can’t help but feel like something’s not quite right. Is it just that he’s grown up and beyond these friendships while they seem stuck in their youthful hard-partying ways? Is there something wrong with the wildcard weird guy they brought home from the pub, a group tradition they indulge in to liven up the festivities? Or does everyone in the group actually harbor some ill will or resentment toward Pete?
Lead actor Tom Stourton is also one of the film’s co-writers, alongside his “Totally Tom” comedy team partner Tom Palmer, working with first-time feature director Andrew Gaynord. With the narrative planted pretty firmly in Pete’s perspective, the film ratchets up the intensity by dancing constantly between these multiple possibilities regarding the reality of the situation, keeping the audience guessing until the very last line. Smash cuts and jump scares hold the mechanics of the film within a horror milieu, while tension is frequently also punctured by laughs (and a few choice soundtrack selections) and even moments of sincere tenderness.
It’s an expert depiction of social paranoia, so visceral is Pete’s discomfort that it becomes horrific – or is it actually that some horrific plot has been cooking against him all this time? It’s a delicious pleasure to find out – assuming you can handle the uncertainty in the meantime better than Pete can.
To The Moon (2021 | USA | 82 minutes | Scott Friend)
A second film that’s also playing as a part of NIGHTSTREAM bears some striking similarities to All My Friends Hate Me. A man heads out to a country retreat away from the city, joined by his romantic partner. He’s unexpectedly reunited with someone from his past who turns out to be a major wild card, throwing a wrench into his plans for peace and/or fun and complicating the vibe. A lot of both films’ runtimes are spent in ambiguity regarding whether this wild card is actually “malevolent”, to use a word from this one, or if the lead is perhaps not being messed with by anyone at all but is instead just dealing with psychological issues.
In this one’s particulars, Dennis (played by the film’s writer/director, Scott Friend) is spending some time at a family cabin in the unspecified American wilderness outside of an unspecified American city, with his supportive wife Mia (Madeleine Morgenweck), in an attempt to detox and weather withdrawal symptoms from an unspecified substance addiction. They’re surprised by the presence of Dennis’s estranged brother, Roger (Will Brill, of the Netflix show The OA). Roger disrupts the couple’s tranquility with his unclear intentions – the brothers had clearly parted in the past on bad terms, but he claims he’s different now, religious. Some culty-looking robed figures from a nearby “monastery” and the introduction of some hallucinogenic forest berries aren’t helping things, either.
The tension and fun ambiguity regarding the reality of this situation are as effective in this film as they are in All My Friends, although the mastery of craft here isn’t quite on the same level. In some moments, the acting feels a bit amateurish, and several plot elements are set up and then never paid off, just dropped and forgotten. Altogether, though, the two make great companion pieces, a very interesting case study in when to assume the weird vibes are all in your mind – and when to trust your gut.
Images courtesy of NIGHTSTREAM.
All My Friends Hate Me had a limited-time viewing window on Sunday, October 10th, and is no longer available to view, but should be seeing a wider release via NEON soon.
To The Moon is available for viewing via NIGHTSTREAM’s Eventive platform (along with a Q&A with the director & cast) until midnight PST at the end of Wednesday, October 13th.