Kill Your Friends remixes a brutally funny novel into an entertaining if somewhat familiar big-screen tale of amoral, chemically-fuelled decadence.

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.

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.

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.

The difficulty with black comedy is avoiding overkill and Kill Your Friends is a dictionary definition of the word.