#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD

***

Directed by Marcus Dunstan. 

Starring Jade Pettyjohn, Jennifer Ens and featuring JoJo Siwa. Horror, US, 91 minutes, Certificate15. 

Released digitally in the UK on 18th November by 101 Films

#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD ticks all the boxes of a road trip slasher movie – young and beautiful 20-somethings with a shared secret, an isolated house, a masked killer and lashings of gore.  

Sarah and her friends are on their way to a music festival – the same festival where, twenty years before, a similar group was murdered by the Seven Deadly Sins Killer – when car trouble forces them to find last-minute accommodation in an AirBnB, where they set up Party HQ. Music cranked up, alcohol flowing and phones recording, they get ready for a night of fun. But they’re being watched and soon the murdering begins. As tensions mount, the in-fighting starts, and it becomes clear that some members of the group are hiding a terrible secret.  

So far, so generic. But although #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD stays very much in its lane, it does bring some interesting things with it: the energy is slightly unhinged, the kills are impressively inventive and gruesome, and the plot twists are pleasing. The movie is a child of its time, with characters and story immersed in the world of social media, and it makes a few good (albeit familiar) points about the uses and misuses of influencer platforms, and the dangers of shared information. 

Speaking of story, viewers will need some patience with the seemingly scattered voiceovers and historical footage at the beginning, and trust that everything will eventually connect, in a satisfying way.  

A firm directorial hand keeps the characters’ interpersonal flare-ups under control, where so many similar films devolve into screaming and chaos (I’m looking at you, IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE). Here friendships, although strained, stay mostly solid.  

There are moments of real tension and, as mentioned, the kills are gruesome, but there is little true horror, and the atmosphere is too often compromised by slapstick humour for anything to get really disturbing. This is to be expected from a ‘fun’ slasher, but a few of the sillier scenes went on a touch too long and added nothing to the story. 

On the whole, #AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD is ‘Horror Lite’ – a reliable and comfortingly familiar slasher story, with lots of gore, a dash of comedy and nothing really scary.  

Robyn Fraser