{"id":632381,"date":"2026-06-11T03:54:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T03:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/632381\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T03:54:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T03:54:17","slug":"find-your-friends-review-it-girls-party-hard-and-fail-to-thrill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/632381\/","title":{"rendered":"Find Your Friends review: It girls party hard and fail to thrill"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview with Variety<\/a> ahead of the Fantasia world premiere of Find Your Friends, the directorial debut from Izabel Pakzad, she revealed that one of the film\u2019s 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\u2019 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\u2019d caught them?<\/p>\n

Now 30, the writer-director works through this traumatic encounter in Find Your Friends, which features an ensemble of veritable \u201cit girls\u201d\u2014some with more acting chops than others\u2014who 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\u2019t 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\u2019s life: her longtime relationship with James Franco, whom she publicly supported even as multiple women<\/a>, mostly his acting students, brought forth allegations<\/a> of sexual exploitation. The scandal practically killed Franco\u2019s career (and resulted in his on- and off-screen bud Seth Rogen cutting ties<\/a>), but his and Pakzad\u2019s relationship never seemed to sour. (Indeed, he even appeared on a recent Find Your Friends red carpet.)<\/p>\n

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.\u2019s most bronzed and beautiful. Amber (Helena Howard of Madeline\u2019s Madeline, a severely underutilized powerhouse) is trying to go shot-for-shot with her besties (played by Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, Zi\u00f3n Moreno, and Sophia Taylor Ali) when she spots a man out of the corner of her eye. \u201cYou said he wouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019t do anything sexually unsavory, it\u2019s simply a \u201cno means no\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> Franco\u2019s scandal). Although Amber\u2019s unhinged act of violence clearly hints at unprocessed trauma affecting her mental health, the group nevertheless jets off to their next adventure. They\u2019ve booked an Airbnb in Joshua Tree, where they\u2019ll attend a party hosted by a \u201cCoachella crush\u201d that promises to be a rager. In this sense, Amber\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 90 minutes actually feature any tangible plot\u2014the rest is vodka-swilling, molly-popping, booty-shaking nonsense. This isn\u2019t to say that random youthful intoxication can\u2019t be compelling: See something like Avalon Fast\u2019s Drinking And Driving<\/a>, 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\u2014and, as Pakzad states in that same Variety interview, to \u201creinvent the final girl\u201d\u2014it\u2019s going to need more than a tense car chase and another scene of Chloe Cherry being violently humiliated (it\u2019s like suffering through Euphoria all over again) to raise the stakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Howard plays Amber with as much nuance as she can\u2014a scene in which she handles a hilariously thick prosthetic penis and a pair of scissors is the film\u2019s sole highlight\u2014but Find Your Friends never figures out what it wants to be. It\u2019s not engrossing enough to be a thriller, nor is it a riff on Spring Breakers<\/a> sex-murder-rave culture, and its confusion is tinged with a distasteful flavor. Despite growing from one of Pakzad\u2019s most vivid waking nightmares, the film is simply an aimlessly meandering road trip.<\/p>\n

Director: Izabel Pakzad
Writer: Izabel Pakzad
Starring: Helena Howard, Bella Thorne, Zi\u00f3n Moreno, Chloe Cherry, Sophia Ali
Release Date: June 12, 2026 (Shudder)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an interview with Variety ahead of the Fantasia world premiere of Find Your Friends, the directorial debut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-632381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}