All My Friends Hate Me is a 2021 Dark Comedy and Psychological Horror film written by Tom Stourton and Tom Palmer and directed by Andrew Gaynord (of Stath Lets Flats).
Stourton stars as Pete, whose old university friends George, Archie, Graham, Fig and Claire have organised a reunion for his 31st birthday, instructing him meet them for a party country estate owned by George. Pete shows up, only to find the manor mysteriously empty.
Pete spends several hours waiting alone in the hours before his friends eventually do turn up, but he quickly discovers that there is something off about the gang's behavior, chiefly in the way that they behave weirdly surprised and uncomfortable about the fact that he has shown up at all. To make matters even more strange, his friends have brought along a mysterious local called Harry along for the weekend. Pete becomes increasingly paranoid that Harry has some sort of ulterior motive to mess with him, and perhaps his friends are in on it because they all hate him.
This film provides examples of:
- Accidental Public Confession: In the end, Pete thinks that everyone is trying to convince him to confess to prank-calling a neighbor while he was a teenager and inadvertently driving her to suicide. They actually had no idea about that, but the cat's out of the bag at that point.
- Addled Addict: Archie takes prodigious amounts of cocaine and any other drug he can get his hands on, he barely sleeps and he even drives and goes shooting while sleep-deprived and high. He becomes increasingly physically wrecked over the course of the weekend.
- Ambiguous Situation: What is wrong with Pete? Is he mentally ill? Why does he have such trouble remembering things? Does the final scene with Sonia even happen for real? It's never made clear.
- Big Fancy House: The celebrations take place at a big country house once owned by George's father.
- Butt-Monkey: Pete spends the whole film like this. Odd circumstances, unfortunate coincidences, unfair criticisms, and poor decisions all conspire to have him come out the worst in virtually every interaction.
- Catchphrase: Archie makes a point of describing people and things as "wiendish", a Portmanteau of "weaselly" and "fiendish".
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Pete's friends mention "Plank" a few times as someone with whom they had hijinks with long ago and wore a wizard cap. In the end, it's revealed that Harry has been Plank all along.
- Pete notices one of the beaters giving him a weird look. In the end, the man reappears as "Fake Pete" to do a roast of him.
- Comedic Sociopathy: So, so much. Harry however takes the cake.
- Cringe Comedy: This film is social anxiety as psychological horror.
- Driven to Suicide: In the end, Pete reveals that he prank-called a canophobic girl by barking like a dog so often that he blames himself for her suicide.
- Dude, Not Funny!:
- It's a recurring theme that jokes will either offend someone or someone will pretend to take offense at first and then make a joke out of it, such as when Sonia pretends to get offended at Archie's Jimmy Savile reference only to then say she's offended by his bad impression. Pete's jokes often land flat and sometimes a little unfairly. His joke about Fig marrying George for money lands flat, but George later makes a joke himself about Fig inheriting his house.
- As a straight example, Archie mentions some bad behavior that the group used to indulge in during their college-aged years, but Pete stuffily replies that he finds those stories immature and inappropriate — much to Archie's consternation, as Pete used to love their old games most of all, but is now trying to take the moral high ground.
- Easily Forgiven: Played for sureality. In the end, after having a mental breakdown in front of all his friends and violently attacking Harry, Pete asks the stone-faced Sonia if she'd still consider marrying him, and she gives him a flat no. And then she says she's only kidding, and of course she'll marry him. It's not clear whether this even happens.
- Foreshadowing:
- The friends mention that Plank came around with a big wheel of cheese, and later, they comment that Pete probably had strange dreams because he ate too much cheese before giggling meaningfully. This could be an early attempt to nudge Pete into remembering Plank, who's sitting beside him and joins in on the reference, but Pete doesn't notice.
- George jokes that Pete volunteered to make up for his past sins, which gets a bad reaction out of Pete even though George had merely been referring to Pete's wilder younger days. But Pete really feels guilt over accidentally harassing a girl into suicide and avoiding all blame for it.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Played with. Pete becomes convinced that he is this trope. He's wrong... at first. By the end of the film, however, he has alienated all his friends to the extent that he probably qualifies.
- Gaslighting: Pete is increasingly convinced that Harry is trying to drive him crazy and/or turn his friends against him for some unknown reason.
- Hidden Depths: Archie becomes sincerely upset after his joke for Sonia doesn't hit as strongly as he'd hoped and privately admits his insecurity over his age and lack of direction in life, showing that, like Pete, he has some degree of social anxiety. However, Pete only comforts him for a moment before snagging onto Archie's apparent suspicion of Harry.
- Holier Than Thou: Downplayed. Pete isn't overly self-righteous, but he is quick to bring up how he's a better person than others because he volunteered with refugees, and he upsets Archie by claiming that he always found their "wild card" tradition to be cruel, even though Archie knows that Pete loved it and eagerly participated. And his grandstanding turns out to be entirely irrelevant, as Plank, one such "wild card," had a great time and happily reconnected with the group for Pete's sake, so evidently the group weren't merely bullying their invites.
- Hope Spot: After Sonia arrives and takes the pressure off of Pete, things finally seem to be turning out for the better. And his growing guilt for having never told her about his tryst with Claire gets resolves without any difficulty, seemingly leaving no further conflicts left to resolve... until everything collapses.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Archie manages to clip a rabbit despite being high on cocaine, and despite the fact that he is firing a shotgun through the window of a moving car. He later turns up for the gang's pheasant hunting trip drug-addled and severely sleep-deprived after an all-night bender but still manages to shoot more pheasants than Pete (who bags a big fat zero). Justified as he is the poshest of the lot and evidently a very experienced game hunter.
- Juggling Loaded Guns: Archie thinks it'd be a jolly good wheeze to put on a balaclava and creep up behind Pete with a shotgun. Pete is naturally freaked out but Archie assures him that it isn't loaded "Oh, it is loaded actually, sorry...".
- Mistaken for Racist: Pete objects to Archie using the word "pez" as shorthand for "peasant" because it might offend Harry. Archie immediately chides Pete for indirectly calling Harry a peasant, and Harry responds in kind.
- Mighty Whitey: Pete has just returned from a year spent doing volunteer work abroad with refugees... and he won't let anyone forget it.
- Motifs
- Dogs barking. Pete is drawn to a dog barking strangely during his ride to the house. Later he has a dream about a dog barking. It's ultimately revealed that he drove a girl to suicide by barking at her over the phone.
- Guilt over suicide. Peter learns that Claire attempted suicide shortly before he broke it off with her. He later has a dream in which she hangs herself. In the end, it's revealed that he accidentally drove a girl to suicide as a teen.
- Mental illness. Claire reportedly attempted suicide and is in a psychologically vulnerable state. Pete takes pills that he claims are just herbal remedies, but he panics when he believes they might have been stolen or tampered with. He also reveals that he's been in therapy. Over the course of the story, it becomes increasingly apparent that he has gaps in his memory, false memories, or both.
- Narcissist: Pete is convinced all of his friends' actions are a concerted attempt to screw with his mind. They're not- he's just too self-centered to see this.
- Not So Above It All: Pete criticizes his friends to Sonia for being immature, stunted, and mean-spirited, and haughtily declares himself morally above the group's shenanigans. However, he freely brings up the story about Norman (and embellishes it to make Norman look dumber) to earn laughs, only for it to fall flat even before Norman appears. Not to mention he accidentally drove a girl to suicide, which is far worse than anything the group did.
- Red Herring:
- Harry brings a duck to the estate on the first night, then sets it free. The next morning, Pete discovers a decapitated duck right before Pete charges at him with an axe, which furthers his suspicions that he is unstable and dangerous. However, it's never brought up again, and in the end it was probably a different duck that died as a result of some unrelated misadventure.
- The homeless man and the mud-covered car Pete discovers on the grounds are totally unrelated to anything happening to him.
- The Reveal:
- Pete's friends keep teasing him about the "surprise" they have in store for him. He keeps assuming that their various pranks are the surprise, but it turns out to be the Fake Pete who does a roast of him, and the fact that Harry is actually "Plank."
- Pete realizes that someone has been tampering with his medication and assumes it was Harry, attemptin gto drug him. Archie did, but his intent wasn't malicious.
- He also discovers a mysterious girl used as the lockscreen for Harry's phone. He assumes that she is a younger version of the girl he and his friend harassed into suicide, and Harry is her brother, but a confused Harry reveals that she's actually his daughter.
- Rewatch Bonus: After Archie and Pete have their heart-to-heart and Archie confirms Pete's suspicions about Harry, Archie watches Pete leave and gives a small flicker of a smile just before the scene cuts. This could easily be interpreted as pleasure over reconnecting with a friend, but upon rewatch it's clear that Archie is smiling because he's just played into the gang's big surprise by encouraging Pete to question Harry's real identity.
- Right Behind Me: When Pete is pressured to tell a funny story, he describes his encounter with a creepy local man who gave him directions to the party and then suggested he might even come along and join the party himself later. This man turns out to be the groundskeeper of the house, going to the party because he was due to be working there, and he arrives right in the middle of Pete's story. Needless to say he doesn't find Pete's impression of him funny.
- The Roast: Pete's friends arrange for an impersonator to do a comedy routine. "Fake Pete" is a neurotic who brags about his charity work- and does all the things Pete does that have been annoying his friends all weekend.
- Running Gag: Pete getting interrupted just as he's about to start in on subject. He's first upstaged by Harry, who then politely yields back to him. Later, he's repeatedly shortcut while trying to tell an anecdote about a refugee child who "understood something for the first time." Later, he's about to explain "the thing about Sonia" before Archie cuts him off.
- Upper-Class Twit: All of Pete's university friends are upper-class "toffs," and Pete feels a bit alienated from them after having left their society for so many years.
- Upper-Class Wit: Inverted. Pete feels pressure to resume his role as the "skipper of the party" for the group, but he's immediately outshined by the crass party animal Harry and turtles up, unable to compete. It's further subverted in the end when it's revealed that Pete's friends might never have considered him the "skipper," and that was something only in Pete's own head.
- What You Are in the Dark: In a fit of rage, Pete calls Harry a "pikey," proving that he's not the morally superior, enlightened, mature person of the group compared to the others, no matter his volunteering experience.
