In an interview with Variety ahead of the Fantasia world premiere of Find Your Friends, the directorial debut from Izabel Pakzad, she revealed that one of the film’s tensest moments was inspired by an experience she had as a recent college grad. On the road back to Los Angeles after a debauched girls’ trip in Joshua Tree, Pakzad and a friend found themselves pursued by a man driving a large truck. The vehicle gave chase at over 100 MPH, and a lack of cell reception meant that Pakzad and her friend were unable to call authorities. Eventually, the speed demon relented, but a sickening thought lingered as the women continued to drive down the dark, desolate desert roads: What would have happened if he’d caught them?
Now 30, the writer-director works through this traumatic encounter in Find Your Friends, which features an ensemble of veritable “it girls”—some with more acting chops than others—who end up in a chillingly similar situation. Well, save for the fact that these girls actually do come face to face with misogynistic evil. As a faithful entry in the revenge horror canon, the film doesn’t let the men who target the rowdy party girls get away with their transgressions scot-free. Even so, the politics of Find Your Friends quickly become muddled by a very public aspect of Pakzad’s life: her longtime relationship with James Franco, whom she publicly supported even as multiple women, mostly his acting students, brought forth allegations of sexual exploitation. The scandal practically killed Franco’s career (and resulted in his on- and off-screen bud Seth Rogen cutting ties), but his and Pakzad’s relationship never seemed to sour. (Indeed, he even appeared on a recent Find Your Friends red carpet.)
All of this is to say that this prominent personal connection seems directly at odds with whatever it is that Pakzad is trying to say with her characters. Find Your Friends opens with a massive yacht party, and the invite list clearly includes L.A.’s most bronzed and beautiful. Amber (Helena Howard of Madeline’s Madeline, a severely underutilized powerhouse) is trying to go shot-for-shot with her besties (played by Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, Zión Moreno, and Sophia Taylor Ali) when she spots a man out of the corner of her eye. “You said he wouldn’t be here,” she snaps at Lavinia (Thorne, the only one with an even remotely memorable name). Her friends tell her to chill out and hook up with the new hunk who’s checking her out. But when the two retreat to a quiet cabin, Amber starts to feel off. Eventually, she pushes the man off herself, overwhelmed by his body weight and sheer horniness. The mystery man doesn’t do anything sexually unsavory, it’s simply a “no means no” situation. That makes it all the more unexpected when Amber sees him laughing with another girl and decides to smash a glass punch bowl over his head.
The friends are forcibly ejected; on their way out, they jeer at the frat boys on board, hinting at their preference for boozed-up 17-year-olds (a detail that directly recalls Franco’s scandal). Although Amber’s unhinged act of violence clearly hints at unprocessed trauma affecting her mental health, the group nevertheless jets off to their next adventure. They’ve booked an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, where they’ll attend a party hosted by a “Coachella crush” that promises to be a rager. In this sense, Amber’s friends are clearly not looking out for her: They ply her with drugs and alcohol to numb her pain, then dismiss her thinly-veiled cries for help. When she experiences yet another panic attack mid-hookup at this desert party, the girls roll their eyes and shrug.
This betrayal nearly does more damage to Amber than the crew of Joshua Tree macho men who want to hunt down these L.A. women for sport. But truth be told, Find Your Friends is less of a game of cat-and-mouse than it is a nothingburger of party scenes shot through drunk goggles. Only about 30 minutes of the film’s 90 minutes actually feature any tangible plot—the rest is vodka-swilling, molly-popping, booty-shaking nonsense. This isn’t to say that random youthful intoxication can’t be compelling: See something like Avalon Fast’s Drinking And Driving, which basically just follows two friends as they get fucked up in their nondescript hometown. But because Find Your Friends so desperately yearns to comment on the rape revenge subgenre—and, as Pakzad states in that same Variety interview, to “reinvent the final girl”—it’s going to need more than a tense car chase and another scene of Chloe Cherry being violently humiliated (it’s like suffering through Euphoria all over again) to raise the stakes.
Howard plays Amber with as much nuance as she can—a scene in which she handles a hilariously thick prosthetic penis and a pair of scissors is the film’s sole highlight—but Find Your Friends never figures out what it wants to be. It’s not engrossing enough to be a thriller, nor is it a riff on Spring Breakers sex-murder-rave culture, and its confusion is tinged with a distasteful flavor. Despite growing from one of Pakzad’s most vivid waking nightmares, the film is simply an aimlessly meandering road trip.
Director: Izabel Pakzad
Writer: Izabel Pakzad
Starring: Helena Howard, Bella Thorne, Zión Moreno, Chloe Cherry, Sophia Ali
Release Date: June 12, 2026 (Shudder)