a sublimely cringey comedy about millennials, their fibs and their failures

Rocking out alone for his own 31st birthday – while lingering for hours in a gorgeous country house – is supposed alpha male Pete (Tom Stourton)’s first indication that something is amiss in the aptly named British indie All My Friends hate me With its shiver-through-the-fingers-cringe factor, this is an all-around excellent black comedy of absence. It’s about millennials, their lies and their failures.

Where is Everyone? Old college friend George (an ever-smiling Joshua McGuire) has lent his family bunch for the occasion, but things are over in an instant when his half-dozen patrons trudge in from a nearby pub. Is Pete just imagining things or has he lost the ability to relate to this crew?

He’s recently back in the UK after volunteering in a refugee camp in Lebanon and has a cute soon-to-be fiancée (Charly Clive) who’s coming over from the north in about a day. He mentions the refugee issue with embarrassing regularity, as if to prove that he’s grown as a person. Icebreaker chat, it’s not. But why don’t they treat him like the party king he always thought he was?

It doesn’t help that a stranger has broken in – an enigmatic local named Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns, sinfully unsavory) whom George and co snatched from the pub and inflicted as a mysterious guest. This hot hellraiser has a warped attitude towards personal space, barging in when Pete is taking a bath and making weird comments about the shape of his penis. His presence tenses many a scene as Pete’s true distinction emerges, despite his best efforts to soften it with bright insolence and distort his accent.

Stourton co-wrote this screenplay with his regular sketch comedy partner Tom Palmer, and debut director Andrew Gaynord helped them create a spiky gem, sleek and to the point. There are moments – an insane, axe-wielding chase through some fields – when the smoldering class struggle threatens to tip into full Ben Wheatley horror comedy territory; but it’s a sign of the film’s confidence that this is mostly teasing. Almost everything here can be interpreted as an edgy joke or as a lightening up, no matter how cruelly unfunny Pete starts to find it.