There is a version of Find Your Friends that works. You can see it flickering throughout Izabel Pakzad’s feature debut, buried beneath the strobing lights, pounding bass, and endless haze of drugs, hookups, and desert parties. The film clearly wants to confront misogyny, rape culture, and the ways women are often left to navigate dangerous situations without support, even from the people closest to them. Those are worthwhile ideas, and at times Find Your Friends gets frighteningly close to saying something meaningful about them. Unfortunately, it spends so much time circling those themes that by the time the story finally arrives somewhere substantial, it has largely exhausted its momentum.
The film opens aboard a lavish yacht party where Amber (Helena Howard) and her friends are drinking, dancing, and gossiping about the men around them. It is immediately apparent that Amber is the odd one out within this particular friend group. While the others enthusiastically embrace the nonstop party lifestyle, Amber seems disconnected, carrying the weight of a recent breakup and struggling to enjoy herself in the same way. When an encounter with a handsome stranger suddenly turns aggressive, Amber is forced to fend him off herself, an experience that lingers long after the party ends.
That moment becomes the foundation for the film’s strongest idea. Amber spends much of Find Your Friends attempting to numb herself through substances and distraction while repeatedly finding herself confronted by predatory men and uncaring company. Howard gives the film’s most grounded performance, portraying someone who is simultaneously desperate to escape her own thoughts and unable to ignore the dangers unfolding around her. Even when the movie loses its way, Amber remains compelling.
The rest of the ensemble is more uneven but often entertaining. Bella Thorne plays Lavinia as the forceful ringleader of the group, constantly pushing everyone toward the next adventure, while Zión Moreno’s Zosia serves as a sort of reluctant caretaker attempting to keep the increasingly chaotic trip from completely imploding. Chloe Cherry brings some fun energy as Lola, whose carefree party-girl persona masks a vulnerability that eventually becomes central to the story’s darker turns.
After being kicked off the yacht, the group heads into the desert for what is supposed to be a carefree girls’ getaway centered around a mysterious party invitation from one of Lavinia’s online connections. The early stretches of the film are admittedly effective at capturing the energy of these gatherings. Pakzad, along with cinematographer Tim Curtin and editor Maxime Pozzi-Garcia, demonstrates a strong command of editing, music, and atmosphere, creating party sequences that feel appropriately overwhelming and disorienting. Whether that is something viewers will enjoy for nearly two hours is another question entirely.
Because that is ultimately where Find Your Friends begins to lose itself. The film spends so much time bouncing between parties, substance abuse, arguments, and intoxicated wandering that the actual narrative barely moves for well over half its runtime. Scenes feel caught in a repetitive cycle of stops and starts, with the story repeatedly teasing escalation before retreating back into another extended sequence of dancing and substance-fueled excess.
The frustrating part is that the movie becomes significantly more effective whenever it directly engages with the threat hanging over Amber. One particularly harrowing sequence involving a group of men pursuing her through the desert is easily the film’s strongest scene, largely because of how grounded and terrifying it feels. There are no supernatural elements or larger genre hooks to hide behind here. The danger comes entirely from the very real behavior of men who feel entitled to women’s bodies and react violently when rejected.
Those moments suggest a sharper, more focused film than the one we ultimately get. As the story finally transitions into its last act, tragedy strikes and the surviving members of the group find themselves drifting through a hallucinatory desert nightmare while unaware of the full scope of what has happened around them. Amber’s increasingly traumatic drug-induced visions connect directly to her experiences with sexual violence, while the threat posed by the film’s antagonists finally erupts into open conflict.
Unfortunately, the climax struggles to fully capitalize on the tension that has been building. Some uneven performances undermine what should be the movie’s most terrifying moments, and the film’s broader themes never evolve much beyond their initial presentation. The ideas of female solidarity and collective resistance against misogynistic violence remain mostly surface-level concepts rather than fully realized emotional payoffs.
To its credit, Find Your Friends does eventually deliver a genuinely wild burst of violence near its conclusion that jolts the film awake after a long stretch of narrative stagnation. It’s the kind of shocking image that momentarily makes you sit up and pay attention. Yet even that memorable finale cannot fully compensate for the long, meandering road required to reach it.
For a film so determined to explore the horrors women face at the hands of predatory men and the lack of support regarding them, Find Your Friends never digs quite deep enough beneath its own aesthetic. What remains is a stylish but frustratingly hollow experience that mistakes provocation for insight far too often. There is promise here, particularly in Helena Howard’s performance and a handful of genuinely unsettling sequences, but the final result feels more interested in projecting edginess than earning the emotional weight of its conclusions.
'Find Your Friends' starts streaming on AMC+ / Shudder on June 12th.
