Find Your Friends (18)

Director: Izabel Pakzad
Screenplay: Izabel Pakzad

Starring: Helena Howard, Bella Thorne, Zion Moreno
Running time: 89 minutes

Shudder

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Review: RJ Bland

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Final girls get a lot of attention, don’t they? For decades, the Laurie Strodes, Nancy Thompsons and Sidney Prescotts of this world have been stealing the spotlight. That singular heroine who must dig deep within herself (or himself) to overcome the ultimate evil. Or at least survive long enough to fight another day. Battling evil alone is a lonely business, though, and if Stranger Things has taught us anything (aside from our enduring obsession with nostalgia), it’s that we still love a group of friends banding together to save the day. Think of Stephen King’s IT (1990), The Cabin in the Woods (2011), The Faculty (1998) or Monster Squad (1987). These films are as much about the power of the collective as they are about any one individual, and there’s something undeniably comforting about facing down evil with the support of your closest friends. Of course, that task becomes considerably harder when the foundations of those friendships aren’t particularly strong. Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), Midsommar (2019) and Unfriended (2014) all demonstrate that if your friends don’t have your back, you could be in serious trouble. A concept that Izabel Pakzad’s feature debut Find Your Friends understands all too well…

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The film opens at a yacht party, where we meet a group of twenty-something college friends: Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zion Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry) and Maddy (Sophia Ali). They appear to be having the time of their lives. Dancing, drinking, taking drugs and hooking up with guys. Well, everyone except Amber, who is having a decidedly less enjoyable time. After spotting her ex on the boat with another woman, she begins flirting with a guy in an attempt to make her former partner jealous. Ah, sexual politics. However, when she finds herself alone with him, he has more than a simple kissing session in mind. She makes it clear she’s not interested in anything further, but her objections fall on deaf ears. Managing to escape, she downs a few drinks before smashing a glass punch bowl over the creep’s head. Amber and her friends are promptly thrown off the yacht, which isn’t much of a problem because they’re heading to an Airbnb in Joshua Tree to, well, drink, take more drugs and hook up with more guys. ‘This is a house to get fuuuuuucked up in!’ proclaims Lavinia, when they enter their new temporary pad in the desert. Before long, however, they find themselves at another party and facing fresh drama. This time, though, the consequences may prove far more serious than simply being kicked off a yacht…

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Crikey. We know there can be underlying tensions and disagreements within even the closest-knit friendship groups, but the women in Find Your Friends rank among the most insufferable tribes in film history. Before you start preparing the argument that we don’t have to like every individual in these groups, I hear you. You’re right. But when all of them are as irritating as they are foolish, it becomes genuinely difficult to root for them. And yes, of course, you’ll want anyone to prevail when they’re up against murderous misogynists, but bloody hell, director Izabel Pakzad makes that very, very difficult. Any sense of who these people are is lost in a haze of drugs, dick chat, songs about pussy, and cuddling each other while repeating ‘Loving You’ over and over (seriously, what the hell is THAT all about). We get that this middle-aged male writer isn’t necessarily the target audience for this stuff but still, it makes for turgid viewing at times. Yet it’s their complete lack of empathy for one another that’s hardest pill to swallow. It takes very little for these women to turn on each other and you’re left wondering how this group became friends in the first place. This would matter less if our main character were immune to most of it, but she’s only marginally better than the rest. Amber’s ability to make one utterly stupid decision after another is quite impressive. Halina Reijn managed to extract some level of interest, empathy and a lot of laughs from her annoyingly Gen Z leads but there’s very little to invest in – or laugh at, here.

 

The men fare no better. In fact, they’re arguably worse. Not only because they are the ones actively perpetrating violence and abuse, but because they are so poorly realised as characters. They exist largely as sketches rather than fully formed people; their defining characteristic is simply that they are “bad men,” and the film appears to believe that is sufficient characterisation. While it’s clear they serve a narrative function, they are so thinly drawn and dramatically uninteresting that the climactic confrontation lands with a shrug rather than any genuine sense of catharsis.

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The final act escalates into increasingly graphic and brutal territory, but the impact feels largely unearned. One scene in particular - you’ll know it when you see it - is obviously intended as the film’s shocking final exclamation mark. Yet instead of delivering the punch it’s reaching for, it comes across as oddly hollow. It's aiming for provocation and emotional release but never quite earns either.

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That’s not to say the film is without any merit. From a technical standpoint, Pakzad’s direction is perfectly competent, and the cast acquit themselves well despite a screenplay that affords them little in terms of depth or nuance. Helena Howard, in particular, gives a committed performance, though she is saddled with a protagonist whose frustrating lack of development often undermines audience investment. The film nods towards themes of party culture, class disparity, and sexual violence, but its treatment of these ideas is broad and superficial. Rather than exploring them with any meaningful insight, it merely brushes against them before moving on, leaving much of the drama feeling weightless.