We all know that familiar feeling of walking into a room, and suddenly being struck by a truly intrusive thought – “everyone here hates me”. Perhaps some have been lucky enough to have avoided such irrational and nonsensical delusions. Still, the vast majority of us have felt insecure from time to time, especially in arbitrary groups of friends. This is the starting-point for All My Friends Hate Me, a bizarre dark comedy directed by Andrew Gaynord, who is working from a screenplay writtne by Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, the latter of which plays the lead, a young man venturing to a remote estate in the English countryside to spend his birthday with a group of his friends, expecting warmth and festivities, but instead being met with hostility, tension and an air of secrecy that initially sets off his suspicions, but gradually begin to erode at his sanity as he leaps through a range of obstacles that are placed in front of him, desperately trying to figure out whether his friends are acting erratically towards him, or if he has just grown delusional as a result of time and space separating them all from the peak of their friendship. It’s a tense and disquieting exploration of the limits of friendship, with Gaynord making quite an ambitious feature-length debut with this peculiar psychological thriller, which proves to have a lot simmering beneath the surface, almost to the point of becoming overwhelmed with content when a simpler approach may have been more effective in tackling some of these ideas.

All My Friends Hate Me is an extraordinarily uncomfortable film – it may be the first horror film ever made that finds its awkwardness being more disturbing than the actual moments of terror, of which there are quite a few in this film, scattered deliberately, so we can never quite predict when we are going to feel that rush of terror that seemingly comes out of nowhere to surprise and bewilder us. Like in any horror film, atmosphere is the primary tool that is used to explore various ideas – whether it be one of complete and utter chaos, or a more measured, calculated approach to infusing each scene with a sense of unease, mood is integral to determining whether the audience responds as intended, or if they’ll scoff at the attempts to frighten us. In this film, this isn’t too much of a problem, since no one intends to scare us, at least not in the traditional sense, since that would be counterproductive to the supposed intentions of the film, which is about the volatility of relationships and their power to become antagonistic at a moment’s notice. Instead of being witness to outright scenes of horror, we’re thrown head-first into this environment that is filled to the brim with the most palpable, uncomfortable tension, none of which is ever resolved – and throughout the film, the viewer is never allowed to feel at ease, each moment just resonates with the kind of putrid awkwardness that many social situations tend to exhibit. Often, this kind of uneasiness can be extremely effective, especially for viewers who can pick up on instances where it is used intentionally.

When presented with this barrage of discomfort, our first instinct as the audience would normally be to retreat – whether out of frustration or complete despair, there is something so visceral about this film and its manner of looking at our society, reducing it to a few grotesque individuals that barely resemble anything even vaguely human in terms of personality. Contrasted with the idyllic English countryside, their behaviour is doubly terrifying – but for those who can work through the repulsion, some fascinating details emerge in the process. All My Friends Hate Me is certainly not the first film that dares to imply that perhaps human beings are the most terrifying monsters of them all, and it is far from the most nuanced – but it is through engaging with this overarching thesis statement, which is restructured into a very tense psychological thriller, that the director and screenwriters can plumb for the most pertinent commentary, which is much more inventive and interesting than a more prosaic version of this story would be. We empathise with the character of Pete without ever feeling sorry for him – after all, he is just as unstable as everyone else. This is not a case of a lone survivor trying to evade evil entities that threaten to destroy him – rather, it’s a portrait of someone on the precipice of destruction being pursued by the very people that were victims of his manipulation in the past. This is only one reading of a film that has them in an abundance – and the striking filmmaking helps ease us into this world, being one of the only instances where we feel like we have any guidance in this otherwise disconcerting version of reality that feels more like a waking nightmare than it does a comedy about friendship, which was the intention all along.

If there were a cinematic equivalent to a manifesto on the benefits of being an introvert, All My Friends Hate Me would be a perfect candidate. Few films have advocated against the idea of friendship more than this one, almost to the point where we have to wonder what compelled the writers to weave this story together, and whether they had been victims of some kind of bizarre interpersonal tension when interacting with their friends. The film is not perfect, and it feels like a debut insofar as it is undeniably rough around the edges, and it feels increasingly dependent on a particular aspect of its story, the loosening of which would be beyond fatal to the overall production, since it is driven by a single plot thread that it holds onto with all of its strength. It’s a very simple film, and there aren’t too many surprises – it does slowly begin to fall apart at the seams towards the end (since it runs a few beats too long – at least 10 or 15 minutes could’ve been excised from the narrative to make it smoother and more consistent), but it is engaging enough to keep us interested, and the gradual descent into further chaos only aids in creating the feeling that this film is hiding several secrets. Not without its flaws, but rather strong enough in its merits to overcome these relatively minor problems, All My Friends Hate Me is a peculiar experiment that may have needed slightly more work to be effective, but remains one of the more disquieting dark comedies of recent years, and one that is oddly more unsettling than many contemporary horror films.