Kill Your Friends

Name: Kill Your Friends
Director: Owen Harris
Released: 2015

Synopsis

In the late 1990s, a drug-addled nihilist resorts to murder to climb the ladder of the London music industry.

70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kill Your Friends remixes a brutally funny novel into an entertaining if somewhat familiar big-screen tale of amoral, chemically-fuelled decadence.
50
Screen Daily
For a film about the music business, it’s interesting that Kill Your Friends sticks so faithfully to one note throughout; it’s as if Niven fears any glimpse of humanity might risk the project’s integrity, but the lack of human empathy ultimately becomes this project’s biggest handicap.
50
Movie Nation
This could have been a lighter picture, sort of a semi-dark Nick Hornby spin on music. That might have been less accurate, but more watchable.
50
Slant Magazine
Thanks to a strong performance by Nicholas Hoult, all reptilian sinew and heroin-chic vacuity, it keeps threatening to become more dynamic and self-critical than its final result.
40
The Guardian
The difficulty with black comedy is avoiding overkill and Kill Your Friends is a dictionary definition of the word.
40
Variety
The film has its razor-sharp grace notes and a seductive stylishness, neither of which can override its relentlessly adolescent worldview.
40
CineVue
It's a rancid cocktail of misogyny, homophobia, and much more besides, that never convinces as scathing satire as much as back-slapping celebration.
40
Empire
Nicholas Hoult does his best to bring Niven's weapons-grade scumbag to life, in a film hobbled by amateurish acting and absence of production value.