Kill Your Friends

Owen Har­ris’ Kill Your Friends is a film which dares the view­er to utter­ly despise its every frame. Its rai­son d’être is to evoke unadul­ter­at­ed con­tempt – of peo­ple, of places, of trends, of art, of busi­ness, of every­one and every­thing. Its cock­sure cyn­i­cism is pre­ci­sion primed to alienate.

It’s a film which scrib­bles a chalk penis on the back of your jack­et, nudges you into a job inter­view and then Periscopes the event from the cor­ri­dor. Entire­ly in line with its unam­bigu­ous aims, this film does man­age to inspire a sense of utter, putre­fy­ing revul­sion towards it. The sheer, all-encom­pass­ing breadth of its casu­al abhor­rence was in itself a feat. If you get a kick out of spend­ing time with some of history’s most repel­lant shit­bags, then Kill Your Friends is a dou­ble lot­tery win. Does the fact that this film achieves what it sets out to do make it a suc­cess? Yes and no. Even when you’re paint­ing with dog shit, it’s always pos­si­ble to pro­duce an ugly pic­ture – just as it’s equal­ly pos­si­ble to pro­duce a pret­ty one. This one is a panoram­ic brown eyesore.

Kill Your Friends runs with the vague and uncon­vinc­ing assump­tion that there were cer­tain par­ties with­in the British music indus­try of the mid- to-late ​’90s who man­aged to coast along – excel, even – with­out expend­ing an ounce of brain pow­er. It was sim­ply a case of careerist nit-wits mak­ing plays that were like­ly to get them a pro­mo­tion, or nob­ble over one of their equal­ly pow­er hun­gry colleagues.

Nicholas Hoult plays charm­less toss­piece Steven Stelfox – the slick lad­der-climber who is brac­ing­ly hon­est about his com­plete dearth of pro­fes­sion­al nous and dis­in­ter­est in the high-stakes world of music A&R. A voiceover nar­ra­tion states this point-blank were there any ambi­gu­i­ty over the mat­ter, and this is intend­ed as a way to help us empathise with Stelfox as he’s being forth­right about his mod­est capa­bil­i­ties. Weak par­o­dies of real bands are parad­ed through the offices, obser­va­tions about how they’re fame-hun­gry par­a­sites are passed off as cut­ting cul­tur­al commentary.

A jol­ly to Cannes to find the next big super­hit results in Stelfox pick­ing up the rights to an awful, X‑rated house tune when he sees peo­ple danc­ing to it in a club. He sees this high-risk ploy as a way to impress his boss­es – his impulse that the pub­lic at large will eat up any old rub­bish is shared by the film­mak­ers. It’s such a tin-eared, hol­low, sneer­ing depic­tion of the era that noth­ing even vague­ly resem­bling valu­able insight lands.

What some­one has then done is read Bret Eas­t­on Ellis’ Amer­i­can Psy­cho and tak­en its (admit­ted­ly stri­dent) satir­i­cal intent at face val­ue, as the sec­ond half of the film focus­es on Stelfox’s trans­for­ma­tion from cheeky chancer to actu­al homi­ci­dal mani­ac. With no sign that any of this should be con­sumed as an anti-cor­po­rate alle­go­ry, the film piles up the unlike­ly twists, the bum­bling one-note char­ac­ters and the ​“clever” set-pieces which exist to empha­sise the sick­en­ing extent of Stelfox’s Machi­avel­lian mox­ie. Bad writ­ing and blind chance con­spire to keep our hero out of prison. No-one cares what he’s doing – and that’s the joke.

Under­neath the smile and the pluck, every­one is a self-serv­ing, nar­cis­sis­tic cretin. Not only does this film want you to hate every fibre of its being, it hates you right back. Thanks.