The superficial expectations of a social media driven world are anxiety-inducing and have led to a Millennial identity crisis. Millennials are often mischaracterized with having inauthentic identities and overstated anxiety. Only recently has there been a cinematic renaissance for Millennial artists who are able to accurately portray their dreadful, anxiety-inducing experiences in film. However, embedded in these anxieties for some classes of Millennials are paranoid delusions, as many privileged classes’ greatest enemy is in their mirror. Films that try to psychologize the paradox of a well-intended generation laced with mental health struggles and identity guilt are: Whiplash, Lady Bird, Shiva Baby, The Novice, The Worst Person in the World, and most recently, All My Friends Hate Me.

This excruciatingly brilliant satirical dark-comedy is the debut feature from director Andrew Gaynord and co-writers Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton (who also stars in the movie). The story begins with Pete (Stourton), a self-described leader of his friend group, who steadily becomes more unhinged as he goes on a rural getaway trip to visit college friends for his 31st birthday. Pete has been away from his friends for almost a decade and humbly brags to his mates of his humanitarian work and his down-to-earth future fiancee, Sonia (Charley Clive). Pete’s group of friends include: George (Joshua McGuire) the wealthy best friend and future best man; his wife Fig (Georgina Campbell), who Pete says he’s close to but can’t remember her actual name; a compulsive but depressed Archie (Graham Dickson); and Pete’s ex-girlfriend Claire (Antonia Clarke), who he finds out attempted suicide after he left university.

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Image via Super LTD

The story quickly unravels as Pete’s friends continue their youthful indulgences and seemingly, spontaneously invite an erratic man from a nearby pub named Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), who begins haunting Pete over the birthday weekend. As the excitement of Pete’s birthday dissipates, you begin to sympathize with his unsettling feeling that everyone at the party — especially Harry — is out to get him for unknown reasons. Between time-jumps and heightened nightmarish sequences, you become trapped with Pete in claustrophobic rooms. On one hand this is Pete's self-destructive journey, and on the other, it may very well be the audience's own personal psychological horror.

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The throughline of All My Friends Hate Me is paranoid delusions and how a lack of self-reflection can lead someone to self-destruct. The focused themes that bind the throughline are social gathering anxieties, protagonist complexes, class or privilege guilt, and most importantly, repressed emotions. All of these themes build on each other seamlessly and lead to an inevitable identity crisis for Pete, all held together by Stourton’s skillful performance blending neurotic dread with comedy.

The social anxiety from family or friend gatherings is rarely portrayed accurately; instead we have wonderful Richard Curtis films that focus on the beauty of relationships. Sometimes beauty in gatherings can be romanticized, so writers Palmer and Stourton expertly turn the Curtis archetype on its head, as they replace feel-good gatherings with anxiety-inducing minefields. As the audience begins to sympathize with Pete’s anxieties, like thinking his friends forgot about his birthday or his struggle to decide how many shirt buttons to undo, those very relatable worries regress to become more toxic. He begins to unravel in a claustrophobic gothic home filled with one-dimensional conversations, which begin to expose the past self he chooses not to acknowledge. As he hides from self-reflection, Pete non-stop virtue signals his volunteer work without asking anyone about their lives and imitates a cultured persona his friends believe to be disingenuous.

Pete has a sort of protagonist complex and lives an illusion where he is at the center of everyone's lives. This complex can be read as the result of social media’s role in a Millennial's life. The film purposely removes technology and social media, and instead materializes the superficiality of everyone’s online persona through Pete and his friends. Pete comes off as a shallow person with a savior complex as he constantly brings up his role as a volunteer at a refugee camp searching for his friend's approval. His conversations are transactional because he wants to keep his distance as his friends are a reflection of his past self. Even when Pete seems to have empathy for his friends when he finds out that Claire attempted suicide after he left school, his self-absorption took over, and he made her struggles a reflection of his decisions.

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It's easy to be sympathetic with Pete over his toxic relationship to his class and privilege guilt. Whether it's the groundskeeper Norman (Christopher Fairbank) or his girlfriend Sonia, he wants working class people to believe that they are the same, which inherently alienates them and illustrates how naive Pete really is. He continues to try and separate himself from an elite class by speaking about his friends as if they are “posh” and even selfish. The identity crisis begins to get more severe after Pete refuses to shoot pheasants with both his friends in the elite class and individuals in the working class, which isolates him from everyone. Pete uses defense mechanisms that enable him to never reflect on his privilege, which inevitably leads to him having a mental breakdown.

Pete’s final birthday present is revealed: a roast. These jokes turn into his personal nightmare, all led by Harry, which frustrates an already skeptical Pete. Throughout the film, Harry haunts Pete and follows him in ways that represent how plagued Millennials are stifled by their fear of being exposed for past wrongdoings. Whether it's when Pete is at his most vulnerable in the bathtub, or when he is sleeping, Harry never leaves him alone. Harry pushes so hard at the roast that Pete confesses when he was younger he bullied a little girl who died of suicide. Harry laughs at Pete’s narcissism and is then attacked by Pete. Harry, through the whole film, symbolizes Pete’s repressed emotions. The attack in his final moment is the lowest for Pete, because instead of facing his distressing past, he lets his unresolved trauma take him over.

All My Friends Hate Me begins and ends with Pete’s identity paradox that he's aware of his great privilege, but also wants to rewrite his privileged past to be absolved of his transgressions. From the relatable introduction of Pete jamming out to The Doobie Brothers’ "What a Fool Believes" and the eerily hilarious opening title card sequence that immediately captures the films uncomfortable throughline of Millennials’ paranoid delusions. To the film concluding with Pete and Sonia in a car on the way home with Sonia telling Pete: “You know the problem with you, don't you? You can't take a fucking joke.” Pete has these series of cognitive distortions, which all generate neurotic beliefs that he is a victim and a savior. The audience can identify with his anxious psyche until he borders on projecting his angst onto everyone around him. He starts to personalize the narratives of everyone's lives trying to distract himself from the guilt of his past, selfish self, that he fears isn't that different from his current self. You won’t leave Pete’s journey wondering if all your friends hate you, but you may leave with Pete’s final thought: Do I Hate Me?