On His Birthday Weekend, a Man Finds That His Friends Aren’t the Same

From left: Georgina Campbell, Graham Dickson,
Tom Stourton, Antonia Clarke, and 
Joshua McGuire in "All My Friends Hate Me"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

While getting together with friends is fun, the act of reconnecting to ones whom you haven’t seen in a while may feel a tad awkward.  You’ve been out of each other’s lives for a while, so you all might not know what’s going on in one another’s personal life, social life, or professional life.  It can feel strange in trying to reestablish a bond because you don’t know whether those bonds are as strong as before.  However, what do you do when you see them after an extended period of time, but it feels like they’re all against you?

This is the stressful situation in which the main character finds himself in director Andrew Gaynord’s dark-comedy, “All My Friends Hate Me,” in which he delivers an anxiety-inducing scenario that unfolds with fine doses of paranoia and uncomfortable wit.

Upon returning to England after doing volunteer work abroad, Pete (Tom Stourton) spends his birthday weekend at his friend George’s (Joshua McGuire) mansion.  Also included in the festivities is Pete’s ex-girlfriend friend Claire (Antonia Clarke), his friend and George's wife Fig (Georgina Campbell), his other friend Archie (Graham Dickson), and a new acquaintance named Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns).  What starts out as a relaxing weekend soon turns disquieting as Pete realizes that his friends are treating him differently, and he thinks Harry might have something to do with it.

Stourton provides a terrific performance as a man who feels less and less at ease as his birthday weekend unfurls.  He’s able to exhibit the uncertainty that he begins to experience around his friends, not knowing what he’s done wrong to make them act the way they’re acting.  Stourton encapsulates the agitation of having people turn against Pete and being hit with a loneliness he didn’t expect to hit him.  However, Stourton occasionally displays a little trait or two here and there where we can slowly start to understand why his friends may be acting this way.  Stourton makes you feel sympathy for him, while also giving you bits of insight into where his friends could be getting their dislike for him.  During the anxious chemistry between Pete and his friends, McGuire, Clarke, Campbell, Hodgson, Dickson, and Demri-Burns all play their parts with unnerving personas as they find their own ways to make Pete feel unwanted.  

Although the screenplay from Stourton and Tom Palmer might be a tad repetitive at times with the friends being nice to and then being mean to Pete, it nevertheless keeps you guessing as to what everything is leading towards.  Right from the first night of the reunion, you’re waiting for the first shoe to drop and show what comment or action will be the catalyst of this unsettling weekend.  From there, the way in which the story has these characters interact keeps their dynamics building as the tension threatens to boil over with each uncomfortable scene.  

As a director, Gaynord’s able to construct tense scenarios that make us squirm with their awkwardness.  Every character confrontation, be it between two people or several, adds another layer to the mystery of their animosity towards Pete.  And, despite the slight repetitive rhythm of going from one strange confrontation to the next, there’s still the tension of learning new information bit by bit as the apprehensive atmosphere is kept alive and the dislike for Pete continues to pile on.

“All My Friends Hate Me” is a blackly funny reminder of how, depending on where your life goes, those who were once familiar to you may seem less so as time goes on.

Grade: A-