Making friends is hard. It’s even harder as an adult – while the media laments the ongoing “male loneliness epidemic”, many men and women are still reckoning with hard truths unveiled during the sudden solitude of the Covid pandemic. The destruction of third spaces, widening gaps in lifestyle exacerbated by lack of disposable income and increasingly unsociable working hours, and the increasing inability to detach ourselves from screens have culminated in a cross-generational crisis whereby plenty of adults – from eighteen to eighty – are realising they just…don’t have friends. The protagonist of Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is one such case: Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) is a marketing executive with a beautiful wife (Kate Mara), nice house and affable teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer) but no social circle beyond the occupants of his house, who seem distant from him.
This all changes when the Watermans mistakenly receive a package intended for their new neighbour. Craig drops it off and meets Austin: a handsome, charismatic TV weatherman with a fully-realised sense of self. (Naturally he’s played by Paul Rudd.) Craig is instantly smitten, and despite being the new guy, it’s Austin who welcomes his neighbour into his life, showing him his fossil collection, sharing his love of punk music, and confiding that he secretly yearns to do the morning weather instead of occupying the evening slot. A bromance is born – Craig seems to come alive, a better husband and father while basking in Austin’s light. Then a tragic reality comes to light: Craig can’t hang.
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This middle-aged middle American, who wants so desperately to be part of something, moves out of step with his peers. He’s assimilated a personality (liking Marvel movies, making crass jokes often at the expense of his wife) but can’t quite cover up the Travis Bickle-level entitled rot that lurks at his core. He parrots humanity but doesn’t exhibit it. There’s something deeply pathetic about Craig Waterman, but also something unfortunately true. This is Robinson’s great gift as a comedian – those familiar with his Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave will recognise his full-body-cringe-inducing style of comedy, which is, admittedly, something of an acquired taste. (Connor O’Malley, a similar cult breakout, delivers the film’s most baffling, brilliant non-sequitur during his short cameo in the film.) That’s not to say Friendship is punching down; Craig is an entirely ordinary villain who is absolutely convinced he’s the good guy. A nice guy, even. It’s evident from the film’s first scene, where – during her cancer survivors support group – he expresses confusion when his wife admits she hasn’t orgasmed since before treatment. “Plenty of orgasms over here!” he declares cheerily.
The same wildcard energy that made Robinson’s sketch series a cult classic is threaded through Friendship (DeYoung wrote the part with Robinson in mind). There’s a feeling that anything could happen at any moment, a strange pedestrian volatility to Craig that makes him just as likely to stew silently as to blow up in spectacular fashion, and the off-kilter sensation of something being not quite right is exacerbated by Keegan DeWitt’s oscillating score, which ramps up the tension with choral arrangements more typical of a horror film than a comedy. But Friendship arguably is a horror movie, evident in more than just its score and high wire tension between characters. The excruciating act of being vulnerable with another human being and the sweaty discomfort of realising a new friend is a bit off are mundane but relatable terrors, after all.