Andrew Gaynord's "All My Friends Hate Me"

TONIGHT’S FILM.

ANDREW GAYNORD’S “ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME”

WHAT IT IS.

A spoiler-free description of the movie.

Pete turns 31 on a weekend getaway with old college friends.

IF YOU LIKE.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

▶ Cringe humor. The British kind. Discomfort so long you aren’t sure whether to laugh.

▶ Reunions, suspense. There’s been a bunch of these recently. I’ve recommended a few, including Greg Jardin’s “It’s What’s Inside”, which was quite good.

▶ Big fancy houses. This one takes place in a big old mansion along the British countryside.

MY TAKE.

What I liked about it.

I’ve been thinking. Young-hot-friends-go-away-together movies are in the midst of a renaissance of sorts.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen great entries in the category: Greg Jardin’s “It’s What’s Inside”, Halina Reijn’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies”, Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”. Today’s film, Andrew Gaynord's “All My Friends Hate Me”, is one of my favorites.

Under Gaynord’s keen direction, the film resembles something between Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and a sketch comedy show. Paired with the sharp wit of writers Tom Stourton and Tom Palmer, the result is something quite novel. And strikingly effective.

The comedy will feel familiar to any fans of British humor. The cringe. The lengthy, uncomfortable silences; unbroken eye contact through it all.

The supporting cast accomplishes something marvelous in “All My Friends Hate Me”, by the way. They bring life to the nuanced concept beneath the film. And frankly, the whole thing probably falls apart without their attention to detail.

Sharing the load with the supporting cast is a wildly articulate score, penned by Joe Robbins, Will Lowes, and Tom Palmer. It’s sparse. Entering and exiting without ceremony. Creating moments of incalculable tension from innocent banter among old friends.

Sometimes — actually most of the time — when I write these articles, my mind wrestles itself. There’s a struggle between anxiety and fear and blind confidence. I feverishly review my writing until things sound perfect. The way I want them to sound. I suppose this is my way of saying: I’m very special because I’m a writer with anxiety.

And so, I love it when anxiety is portrayed effectively onscreen. Certainly because I like to feel seen or heard or whatever. But also, anxiety presents so differently in cases that it’s often hard to explain what it feels like to one another. Experienced by many, understood by few (read: ripe for exploration in filmmaking).

There’s a constant deconstruction and reconstruction and justification of harmless events. The feeling of social dread when something feels slightly off. I’ll save the rest for therapy.

My point is, “All My Friends Hate Me”, is an astonishingly, impressively legible depiction of social anxiety. All the while, it’s a funny, suspenseful hour and a half that never overstays its welcome.

Enjoy the film.

OH, NEAT.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat”.

▶ Tom Stourton and Tom Palmer, the film’s writers, formed a comedy duo together in university called Totally Tom. The original conceit was to satirize the posh world they felt they each came from.²

▶ The writers didn’t originally envision the film taking place in a magnificent mansion. One of their executive producers, however, owned a mansion called Sidbury Manor in Sidmouth, East Devon in the UK. Before production, they convinced him to let them shoot on location at his 19th-century mansion. The cast and crew lived there for three weeks during filming.²

THE QUOTE.

One great line of dialogue from the film.