Find Your Friends – Review. By Deniz Arslan.
This review was written at the film’s preview screening and may contain spoilers. The film will be released on Shudder on June 12.
Izabel Pakzad, in her feature directorial debut Find Your Friends, tries to tell us something about a group of female friends struggling to survive in the face of male violence. But if you ask me, the film sometimes functions more like a documentary about Gen Z observed in its natural habitat. Thanks to its realistic dialogue, performances that are well above average, and its success in building tension, it makes you feel like you’re part of the very friend group to whom all these terrible things happen.
Five close friends — Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali) — are attending a yacht party during the day. Amber starts kissing a man. When she tells him she doesn’t want anything more, he crosses the line into sexual harassment, but Amber manages to defend herself. Even so, she can’t simply forget what happened and continue having fun. After smashing a large bowl over her harasser’s head, she and her friends are thrown out of the party.
They then decide to head to the Joshua Tree Desert together. Apparently, this is the group’s last vacation before school or career paths pull them apart for a long time. At the house they rent in the desert, and later at the parties they attend in town, they have the time of their lives and do a bit of drugs as well. In short, they have no plans other than having fun. But after a while, something that happens to many women who go out at night happens to them too: they begin to be harassed by a group of men. Over time, the threat grows increasingly serious.
Amber, meanwhile, is the only character in a friend group focused solely on having fun who recognizes the seriousness of what is happening, and we largely experience the film through her perspective. At a new party, she thinks she has finally found a “good guy” and begins getting close to him. But her past traumas refuse to let go. Unable to feel safe, she wants to leave, and in the process she is harassed and chased by a group of men.
The other members of the group constantly downplay the danger. They tell Amber she’s being overly dramatic and ruining everyone’s fun — and to be honest, Amber doesn’t always come across as the most rational person either, so I can’t completely blame them. But because of her past trauma, she is always more cautious and notices the approaching danger before anyone else.
If I had to compare this film to other works in a superficial way, I would say it resembles Euphoria in terms of the dynamics of Gen Z relationships, and The Surfer in terms of its desert atmosphere and acid-trip sensibility. Yes, Find Your Friends exists somewhere between those two works. But it also has some genuinely valuable things to say about the dangerous reality women live in.
I have a feeling that many people will find the film’s first two acts boring and prefer the third act, where the story transforms into a tale of survival and bloody revenge. But I’m not sure that was really necessary. Pakzad portrays both the toxic dynamics of Gen Z friendships and the reality that women cannot even enjoy a vacation without being disturbed by men with such authenticity that you sometimes forget you’re watching a movie. You feel less like an audience member and more like an observer witnessing real events unfold.
The Kill Bill-esque revenge section in the third act breaks that realistic experience and takes the film somewhere entirely different. Of course, it is satisfying to watch women stand together against male violence despite all the toxicity and distrust between them, and even more satisfying to see them ultimately prevail. Still, I find myself more drawn to the near-documentary realism of the first two acts.
Even so, I appreciate and respect the direction the story ultimately takes. Pakzad created the film based on a real experience in which she and a group of female friends were harassed and chased by a group of men. There is a genuine lived experience behind this film. Once you learn that, the revenge narrative of the final act begins to feel more meaningful.
And it brings to mind a quote from the dearly missed Carrie Fisher that I have referenced in many of my previous reviews: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”
Verdict: Pakzad’s feature debut blends Gen Z friendship drama, desert-party chaos, and a story of women confronting male violence, and while the final revenge-driven turn loses some of the raw realism that makes the first two acts so compelling, the film’s authenticity never stops shining through.
Score: 7/10
