SPOILERS. WATCH THE MOVIE PLEASE.
I had the privilege of seeing the movie Friendship in theaters last year, expecting a straight comedy. Little did I know, I was walking into the strangest psychological horror ever made.
This movie is, in fact, a comedy movie. There is no real gore or scares in this movie. But it brings you into the headspace of a deeply troubled and scary man.
This movie follows a guy named Craig (Tim Robinson). Craig is a suburban dad in a loveless marriage with a son who doesn’t really care about him. Craig’s life is changed forever when he meets his new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd). Austin brings him in and becomes his friend, and Craig becomes obsessed with Austin. After humiliating himself and getting kicked out of the friend group, Craig engrosses himself in trying to get back into Austin’s good graces.
With this straightforward plot, the rest of the movie is left up to the comedy, which is mostly situational. Anyone who has seen I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson knows his specific style of humor, which is ever-present in this movie. He often embarrasses himself in his attempts to become friends with Austin. The awkward tone of the movie is palpable and hilarious.
Robinson often plays an insufferable loser who humiliates himself through every interaction and situation that he finds himself in. Some of his most memorable sketches (and my personal favorites) are the “Summer Loving”, “Egg Game”, and “The Darmine Doggy Door”. In all three sketches, he goes fully into a character that anyone would be horrified by in real life, but watching them on a TV or laptop screen is perfectly fine.
The comedy style translates beautifully into the most psychologically thrilling movie that I have ever seen. The scene where Craig loses his wife in the sewers is hilarious, but also shot and acted like a horror. Using tight angles and claustrophobic camerawork, the viewer feels so uncomfortable that the embarrassing scenes fill them with such dread and terror.
By far, the funniest scene of the movie is the “trip” scene. Craig is convinced to lick the back of a frog by a teenager working at a phone store in order to open his mind by experiencing the most insane drug trip of his life. Instead, what happens is a minute-long dream sequence in which Craig orders a sandwich at a Subway. The entirety of this scene is hilarious: the setup, the process, the sequence itself, and his outrage after waking up.
It also helps that I happened to be sitting in the front row of the theater while watching this movie, since there were no other options, so any funny moment was made ten times better by the hilarious warped angle at which I was watching the movie. I can think of no greater movie to cringe at while also laughing hysterically at.