Top 10 movies about electronic dance music other than 'We Are Your Friends'

We Are Your Friends, the movie starring Zac Efron as an up-and-coming EDM DJ, opened with modest hopes on Friday. And then, based on the latest box office figures, it bombed.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the flick, playing at 2,333 theaters, just took in $1.8 million over the weekend. This makes it the biggest flop for a movie playing at 2,000 locations. The only ones performing worse over the years were Oogieloves and the Big Balloon Adventure, Delgo and last year’s re-release of Saw.

But beyond the minimal promotion for the film, a few issues made We Are Your Friends unappealing to the average moviegoer and dance music fans alike. For one, it centers on EDM – still a niche culture, in spite of all the trends pieces about how it’s the Millennials’ music. Two, even as an EDM flick, the premise is dated: No one since Tiesto came up in the late 1990s has become successful solely on DJing skills. The big names Efron likely attempted to channel – Skrillex, Avicii and Martin Garrix – became known for their production abilities first. However, a movie about a kid messing around with software and then uploading his tracks to Soundcloud doesn’t make for an interesting plot.

Third, the internet fuels much of modern dance music culture. And as this movie will eventually end up on Netflix, having it in theaters just seems superfluous.

So, while We Are Your Friends came to pass over the weekend, we’ve thought of a few better and more accurate movies about electronic dance music culture.

Image Courtesy of INFphoto.com

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A Midsummer Night’s Rave

Shakespeare’s classic comes to the warehouse parties and clubs of the late 1990s. Andrew Keegan, of 10 Things I Hate About You, stars.

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Better Living Through Circuitry

What did electronic dance music look like the first time it went officially mainstream? This documentary captures the culture and sounds that have long since passed.

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Human Traffic

Of all periods in electronic dance music’s history, the late ‘90s seem to get the most attention. This flick touches on U.K. clubbing culture from that era and offers a killer soundtrack of trance and electronica.

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Groove

Human Traffic gets the U.S. treatment – away from the clubs and to the warehouse parties. Rachel True, best known for The Craft, stars.

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David Guetta – Nothing But The Beat

Forget We Are Your Friends. For detailing the second mainstream wave of electronic dance music, this 2011 documentary about David Guetta’s success is perhaps the most accurate you’ll see out there.

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Electric Daisy Carnival Experience

As a compliment to Nothing But The Beat, this documentary out the same year gives the most on-point depiction of dance music festival culture.

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Party Monster

The film focuses on club promoter-turned-murder Michael Alig. In the process, it dives into New York City’s club kid culture from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

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It’s All Gone Pete Tong

BBC radio DJ Pete Tong doesn’t actually star. Rather, the plot examines the era’s burgeoning DJ culture – a factor that would influence EDM just a few years later.

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Saturday Night Fever

Electronic dance music truly dates back to disco, as the late ‘70s style influenced synth-pop, freestyle, house, electro and techno over the next decade. And if any movie captures the time period and the sounds, Saturday Night Fever is it.

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24 Hour Party People

While this movie about the ‘80s Madchester music scene starts with a Sex Pistols concert, it moves through Joy Division, the prototype for New Order, the seminal band behind dance music classic “Blue Monday,” and the Happy Mondays, the late ‘80s acid house-influenced act, before ending on rave culture from the Second Summer of Love era.