#AMFAD: ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD (2024)

Studio:   Roundtable Entertainment
Director: Marcus Dunstan
Writer:   Josh Sims, Jessica Sarah Flaum
Producer: Kirk Shaw, Stephanie Rennie, John Baldecchi, Sarah Donnelly
Stars:    Jade Pettyjohn, Jennifer Ens, Ali Fumiko Whitney, Michaella Russell, Julian Haig, Justin Derickson, Cardi Wong, Jack Doupe-Smith, JoJo Siwa

Review Score:

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Summary:

Theming their murders to the seven deadly sins, a masked killer stalks a group of friends hiding a secret connected to the death of one of their own.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Two years after the apparent suicide of Collette Campbell in a cabin they shared as a clubhouse, Collette's college friends prepare to attend the KarmaPalooza music festival, which is making its return following the unsolved murders of seven college students who were killed according to the seven deadly sins at the same event 20 years earlier. Collette's former friends include social media celebrity Mona, wannabe influencer Liv, womanizer Lewis "L.B." Bunt, stoner Guy, slacker Will, and their group's newest inclusion, Sarah. Aaron, a drugstore employee with a crush on Sarah, agrees to meet up with the other six friends later.

The group's van blows out a tire on their way to the festival. Police officer Lois Shaw passes by and advises everyone to find a place to stay for the night since their vehicle supposedly cannot be fixed until the next day. After Sarah uses her phone to book a nearby rental property, Officer Shaw drives the six friends to the remote home.

Inside the house, the group finds shot glasses themed to the seven deadly sins waiting for them along with a note from "SDSK Management." Sarah drinks from Wrath. Mona takes Pride. Liv takes Greed. L.B. takes Lust. Will takes Sloth. Guy takes Gluttony, and also drinks Aaron's Envy shot since Aaron is not there yet.

Guy leaves by himself to attend a secret show announced by his favorite band. A masked attacker captures Guy. Taken to a torture room, Guy is killed according to Gluttony by being pumped with a poison that violently explodes his stomach.

When Mona and L.B. begin having sex, the murderer attempts to ax Mona in her back, but retreats after seeing the couple is recording on a phone. Sensing someone was in the room, Mona shows the other friends her video, which proves a person in a mask was stalking them. Immediately afterward, everyone begins receiving taunting texts from Collette Campbell's phone.

Sarah asks who Collette was. Will partially explains Collette was previously part of their crew, but she seemingly killed herself after revealing she had a crush on Mona, whose rejection deeply hurt Collette. Liv privately tells Sarah there is more to the story, which involves the cabin where Collette died burning down, and says Mona was more manipulative of Collette's fragile emotions than she is willing to admit.

Liv gets captured when she tries leaving the house alone. The masked killer livestreams Liv's torture, which results in Liv being doused with a burning liquid, although viewers are unsure what actually happened.

Offended that Mona made up a story about her being bulimic, Sarah storms off. Hoping to hook up with her, L.B. follows after Sarah. The killer subsequently stabs L.B. with a dildo knife before beating him to death.

Aaron finally arrives. Upset to hear from Mona and Will that L.B. might be seducing Sarah, Aaron goes upstairs and finds the bloody bedroom, which alarms everyone.

Strange audio lures Sarah, Mona, Will, and Aaron into the basement where they find a surveillance suite inside a recreation of the cabin where Collette died. Frightened by taunting videos, including one with the seven friends standing in front of the burning cabin, Aaron confesses that their group bullied Collette before she died. As part of her crush, Collette sent Mona a nude video, which Mona publicly posted to embarrass Collette, seemingly driving her to commit suicide due to the shame she brought her deeply religious family. Because Collette carved everyone's names into wood prior to shooting herself, Mona supposedly burned down the cabin to hide their involvement.

As the four remaining friends investigate shrines dedicated to them and the seven deadly sins, the killer suddenly axes Will in his back and knocks off his head. The masked murderer then repeatedly stabs Aaron to death.

Following a struggle, Mona unmasks the killer as Officer Shaw. Sarah unexpectedly slices Mona's throat from behind. While Mona is still alive, Sarah and Shaw force her to watch another video.

Sarah reveals she was in love with Collette and the two of them had a secret relationship. Distraught over Collette's death, Sarah prepared to jump from a bridge until Shaw intervened. After falling in love, Sarah and Shaw then plotted to take revenge against the friends Sarah blamed for Collette's death.

Sarah fully slits Mona's throat. She and Shaw then stage the house to make it look like Sarah was the sole survivor of the SDSK Killer's unexpected return.

While detectives link the crime scene to the previous murders, Shaw openly wonders who took the video of the six friends torching the cabin. Sarah confesses what really happened was she arranged to meet Mona at the cabin so she could shoot her for humiliating Collette. However, Collette found out about Sarah's plan and wanted to stop it. When Collette arrived at the cabin instead of Mona, Sarah accidentally shot her. Sarah then set fire to the cabin to cover up Collette's murder by framing the seven friends for seemingly driving her to suicide.

From a video of one of the new murders, Detective Russell Daniels, who investigated the original SDSK murders 20 years earlier, recognizes a tattoo on the masked killer as belonging to Officer Shaw. Seeing her as a loose end, Sarah emotionally manipulates Shaw into drawing her weapon. Convinced she is the killer and is about to make Sarah her next victim, Detective Russell shoots Shaw dead.

Thinking her plan succeeded, Sarah receives a phone call from the real SDSK Killer while recovering in an ambulance. Upset she copied him, SDSK threatens to kill everyone Sarah knows.

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Review:

At the KarmaPalooza music festival in 2004, or maybe 2003 ("#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead" confusingly cites both years; maybe the movie's release date was pushed and no one rerecorded conflicting dialogue), the police and the public were shocked by the discovery of seven college students brutally murdered according to the seven deadly sins. True crime junkies couldn't get enough of this unsolved mystery. Docuseries "Friends Till the End: The Hunt for SDSK" extensively covered the case. "From Concert to Carnage: The Sounds of Sin" became a wildly popular podcast about the killings. "Fear Festival: The SDSK Murders" was a box office horror hit from producer Juan Gulager. Even 20 years later in 2024, or 21 years if you're going by the date detectives discuss during the climax, TV newsmagazine "Deadline: Unsolved" has a new program devoted to "SDSK: The Seven Deadly Sins Killer."

"#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead" spends an entire two-minute montage building this needlessly detailed backstory about media coverage of the murders, then renders everything irrelevant as nearly none of it matters to the main story. With KarmaPalooza returning for the first time since the unknown killer caused those seven deaths, a new septet of sinners is set up for slaughter near the festival's fairgrounds. Yet not once will any viewer ever think the original culprit is involved again, making it a mystery why the movie goes through all this trouble to cover a dead herring in neon red scales.

For someone born before the 21st century, what could be worse than spending time with a stereotypical airhead molded in the era of social media celebrity? How about spending it with seven of them?

Mona makes mad money as an online influencer. Equally obsessed with appearance and branding, Liv hopes to follow in Mona's footsteps by becoming internet famous. Far less ambitious than either of them, Will usually makes his home on a couch watching mindless television. Guy gets stoned on such strong weed, he hallucinates a squirrel talking to him. L.B. does harder drugs, but he's better known as the promiscuous panty-dropper in the bunch, which makes chronic FOMO-haver Aaron jealous. Aaron also crushes on Sarah, the virginal new girl in the group, which had that seventh spot open because their former friend Collette committed suicide in a cabin fire two years ago.

Imagine that! Exactly seven people, each with a singular characteristic that tees them up to pair perfectly with a corresponding deadly sin. Is the SDSK copycat so lucky that they don't have to do any legwork to find new victims, or is the script lazily structured for convenient serendipity?

Outside of their individual traits, these friends have other elements in common, mostly having to do with vanity and vapidity. They're often on their phones. The women, who speak in phrases like "Yah!" and "whatevah," dress in fit fashions no one but a teenager or 20-year-old could get away with. Only Aaron has a real job, at a drugstore, which he exploits by stealing pills to party with. In other words, there isn't a whole lot of character in these characters.

In keeping with the cast's sassy snappiness, "#AMFAD" assumes a bubble gum pop personality of its own. The film's frenetic editing used to be likened to MTV when that was still a thing. Now it's attributed to attention deficits attracted to quick cuts, whip pans, and zippy music to go along with text message balloons bursting all over the screen. Styled like feature-length TikTok content, if the film's technical end were a person, it would be a pastel punk tween addicted to makeup tutorials on YouTube.

Almost like the film forgets it's supposed to be a color-soaked slasher, "#AMFAD" is only stylish until it suddenly isn't when it comes to the kills. The first person dies while strapped to a chair in a room with the word "Gluttony" prominently positioned on a wall. The victim wears a pig nose. Then he's pumped with poison that bloats and explodes his stomach. Finally, the camera cuts to a close-up of blood dripping into a shot glass labelled "Gluttony," just in case you're somehow still confused about the theme motivating his murder.

After that, the killer's creativity drops off a cliff. One victim simply gets drenched in boiling or acidic liquid. Others are merely hacked with axes or stabbed by knives as "#AMFAD" gradually goes from an annoying assembly of unlikable people to routine horror where, one at a time, everyone finds a reason to wander off alone so a masked stalker can be right there to kill them.

About the best thing I can say for "#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead" is maybe millennials, who are evidently the narrow niche the movie caters to, will enjoy its Instagram-emulating approach and JoJo Siwa appearance, which barely amounts to a one or two-minute cameo. Everyone else can expect an aggressively implausible whodunit where the who is unsatisfying at best and predictable at worst, and the how and why they dunit has holes deeper than the Mariana Trench.

NOTE: There are two mid-credits scenes.

Review Score: 40

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