Owen Harris
Kill Your Friends

A black comedy set in the music world and based on a novel by the popular writer John Niven, the same author of "The Second Coming" in which he narrated a return of Jesus in the contemporary world, a novel perhaps not particularly original but that gives an idea of the writer's imagination, certainly tied to the pop culture of the United Kingdom over the last twenty years. I have not read the novel from which "Kill Your Friends" was derived, a 2015 film directed by Owen Harris and starring Nicholas Hoult in the lead role, which nevertheless echoes the same themes of "The Second Coming" in terms of settings, so I will base my review solely on the film's content, which, in evaluating it, is enough for me. It would be enough even if I had read the novel, as seeking a correspondence sometimes distorts judgment capabilities. Then, of course, every work must be contextualized, but here we are talking about a film that should not be expected to contain more than what is clearly shown.

The protagonist is Steven Stelfox, a young cynical and ambitious producer working at a record label. We are in England in the latter half of the nineties. These are the years of the boom of Blur, Oasis, and Radiohead and a gigantic pop phenomenon like the Spice Girls. The so-called "indie" world enters major labels and begins expanding the range of production companies, which at that time reach their peak in terms of sales and commercial revenues. There is a race to sign the next golden goose and in this world, everyone moves in their own way. Our protagonist is, or at least would be, a talent scout—arrogant and clearly uninterested in music, lost in his excesses in drug use and the greed to climb up the company ranks, he can definitely be defined as a young shark. When it comes down to it, he isn't particularly skilled either. He misses several opportunities, his behavior makes him lose important "profitable" opportunities in terms of commercial aspects, and his vision of the music market and listeners' taste becomes so distorted at some point that it practically renders him inept. But after all, there are no concrete ways to judge what is definitively good and what isn't when considering the music market. When talking about promotion, advertising, and marketing, Steven Stelfox clearly says nothing that does not correspond to reality, but the film also shows how just this vision itself corresponds to ineptitude and is also counterproductive for the production company itself.

Certainly predictable in its developments, stylistically close to Irvine Welsh's literary world and obviously to Danny Boyle's cinematic style, Guy Ritchie, considering "Kill Your Friends" as just a film critiquing the music market would be too simplistic. The considerations made and reported above are way too predictable and we don’t say anything new. To be honest, I am maybe tired of this leitmotif that I have heard over and over, and I have discovered that the truth of it all is that in the end I don’t care: that Lady Gaga earns millions is irrelevant to me. The equation success = quality content has no sense in the music world as in any other sector of our social life. Then one can criticize the system, but ultimately what criticism should be made of something I couldn’t care less about and of which, in the end, the artist is only a more or less conscious means. Around Lady Gaga revolves an entire music industry; everyone profits, but in the end, she is the only one truly exposed. Maybe she is the one who earns the most, but I am not sure, and perhaps she is the only one who truly makes sense to earn: after all, she is the one who goes on stage and under the spotlights, and this is as much a privilege as it is a fact. Everyone wants to see her, not those who work around her.

But the discourse is too broad and would require different implications and a social character, which are not addressed here. "Kill Your Friends" is a raw black comedy with a sharp and ironic style. The grotesque content and plot twists, and also the director and production's choices in the sequences and shots, the soundtrack embedded in the British context of the late nineties, work and make it a pleasant film without any special spectaculation, perhaps in this way also going against the same choices and ideologies of the story's protagonists, creating a sort of contrast that maybe in the end makes sense on an ethical level.