FILM REVIEW: Kill Your Friends (2015)

Are you passionate about music? Convinced that you are part of a chain of inspiration that will inspire a new generation to pick up guitars? Certain that the political changes you preach will come to fruition once you get an album deal? Perfect. In that case, leave the band you’re in, give up your dreams, and distance yourself from the music industry. If Kill Your Friends, a satisfying black comedy based on John Niven’s 2008 book of the same name is in any way accurate, then most musicians are chasing a futile cause.

It’s 1997: Britpop is on its way down, but three chord wonders in identikit parkas are still highly sought; ‘Girl Power’ is an increasingly valuable commodity. Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, Mad Max: Fury Road) plays Steven Stelfox, a contemptuous A&R man working for a major record label who’s tasked with discovering new ‘talent.’ Stelfox and his colleagues, including James Corden (The History Boys) who plays the perma-baffled Roger Waters (The Wall, Animals) are hollow Thatcherite missionaries who radiate self-interest and aspire solely to make money. Contractually required to be stupefied every second they’re on the job, they are the rock n’ roll stars who despise music.

Those who haven’t read Niven’s book and hold notions about the music industry surviving on an attractive species of organised chaos will be disappointed. The debauchery is wilfully garish and smothers any romantic connotations associated with sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. The characters are so vacuous that it’s hard to invest in any of them. Hoult, who is nauseatingly smug at the best of times, is sustained by a herculean cocaine intake and unpronounceable spirits. He is at his best when he takes great pleasure in informing us that most bands will not get signed, gleefully channelling the harsh reality of the industry. Although he involves the audience in his plotting and scheming to become the head of A&R, we do not grow closer to Stelfox, even when he begins to disintegrate in the meandering middle. Laughs are pleasingly crude (‘what’s his problem, other than the AIDS running through his veins?’) but come at the expense of others with incessant brutality.

Stelfox’s colleagues are also reprehensible without appeal. The industry is mainly powered by the worst testosterone fuelled excess, but whatever your gender or age, morality and loyalty are redundant. Although women are often reduced to sexual objects and targets for misogyny, they are more than capable of holding their own. Georgia King (Wild Child, The New Normal) plays Stelfox’s secretary Rebecca, the slutty stereotype who is as ambitious and soulless as her male counterparts. Darren, played by the excellent Craig Roberts (Submarine, Skins) is Stelfox’s subordinate and mercenary in training. Regrettably, he is an underdeveloped character whose trajectory feels like a missed opportunity. Initially enthusiastic, Darren would’ve proved a more rewarding protagonist than the monotonously rapacious Stelfox.

Kill Your Friends will shatter naïve dreams and cause mass squirming. The deafeningly unsubtle title is prophetic as careers, lives and even more seriously reputations are extinguished. If you’re after dark comedy and empty hedonism, then Kill Your Friends will comprehensively murder a few hours of your time. The hollow characters are played with such conviction however, that it becomes a film to enjoy once, rather than one to treasure repeatedly.