Amber (Helena Howard) and her four best friends flee Los Angeles for a girls’ trip in Joshua Tree, only to find themselves unwelcome in a desert town simmering with quiet hostility. As isolation sets in and encounters with aggressive locals grow more threatening, festering resentments within the group begin to surface. What begins as fun and reckless escape spirals into a violent struggle for control and survival, as past wounds and present dangers collide in a night that turns their trip into a revenge-fueled nightmare.
With Find Your Friends, Izabel Pakzad offers 90 minutes of boredom for 5 minutes of pleasure. It is also a film that confuses feminism with stupidity.
A different approach
Normally, a review deals mainly with the film, and less with the intention. But in this case, the two are difficult to separate. And honestly, when I learned what motivated the director to make this movie, I told myself I had to go beyond the bad movie to also criticize the intention behind the work. Let’s see what the director has to say, and take it from there.
“I had the idea to write a thriller set in Joshua Tree after my own real-life experience of being harassed and then chased by a group of men when I was there with my best friends. It was terrifying, and the experience really rattled me – it forced me to confront just how exposed I am as a woman in certain situations. This experience inspired me to dig deeper, and in writing this script, I saw the story as an opportunity to explore feminism and the patriarchy in an honest, brutal, and unflinching way.”
I think the director confuses feminism with egocentrism. The girls in the film are nothing like a group of feminist women. Just because you sleep around or allow yourself to tease a guy only to tell him afterward that you don’t want to fuck with him doesn’t make you a feminist. You’re just immature, even disrespectful. And understand me well. A girl has every right to say no or change her mind at any point during a sexual act. But when the initial plan is to tease another guy to make your ex jealous, or to take a group of men’s cocaine and then tell them to fuck off, you’re asking for trouble. Then again, I’m not saying these girls deserve to be assaulted. But if a guy does the same thing, he’s also asking for trouble. It is therefore very difficult to see these women as victims.
“It’s important to mention that these characters are confronting this party culture that raised them. While they navigate their complicated friendships and differing perspectives on their relationships with men and sex, they do so in a raw, unapologetically wild way—traits rarely given space for female characters in film.”
It’s a good thing Izabel Pakzad explains this “confrontation”, because watching the film, you really, really don’t see it. On the contrary, these girls act like good little rich girls who abuse their privileges and think they are above it all.
We also need to stop seeing the “freedom” to do what we want, how we want, without owing anyone anything, as a right. Being free comes with responsibilities. Clearly, this concept eludes both the director and her characters. You piss off dangerous people? You’re probably going to get beaten up. You are free to make that choice. But you will have to accept the consequences of your actions.
“I love genre films so much, but the final girl trope has always frustrated me—this insistence that women must be sweet and innocent to earn survival. Find Your Friends rejects that entirely. My characters are vulgar, wild, and sexually empowered without consequence. They reclaim their power through violence and chaos rather than virtue. Young women in cinema are rarely allowed this kind of raw complexity without punishment. With this film, I’m not just challenging the final girl—I’m completely reinventing what she can be.”
I agree with the fact that a girl having to be virtuous to survive in a horror movie is outdated. But in the end, Amber is the one who tells the others that they should perhaps consider changing their lifestyle. Yes, there are other much less “clean” survivors, and so much the better. Though already, after 5 minutes, I was hoping the 5 girls would get violently slaughtered. At least there is one cool scene where the girls torture a man.
On the other hand, to go so far as to say that her characters are more complex and profound than what we are used to seeing, and to believe that with her film the director is reinventing the genre… Maybe she should watch more movies. Because in the end, we are left with a very boring movie, with main characters who are anything but endearing. Fortunately, I know that feminism isn’t this.
It doesn’t work
Well… And what about the movie in all of this? It’s flat. We spend half the film (if not 3/4 of it) watching a group of annoying girls party, drink an astronomical amount of alcohol, and consume an absurd amount of drugs. But there’s no plot.
Lavinia (Bella Thorne)
It takes so long for anything interesting to happen that you almost want to stop the movie and go fold your laundry—which would be much more exciting. Plus, there are so many illogical things that you tune out even more. Starting with the famous punch bowl that Amber smashes over a guy’s head. A bowl would never shatter like that, and the guy would never recover from it so easily if it had.
I also love how easy it is to find an Uber in the middle of the desert, in the dead of night, and how easy it is to attack someone in that very same place. Then, they try to make us believe these girls have experienced traumas that influence their actions. Yes, you’ve been in situations where you were scared in the presence of strange men, but you leave alone, in the middle of the night, in a place you don’t know, to keep the party going after your friend said she was attacked. Yes, sure. Fine. After that, tell me I’m supposed to believe it…
I also question the actual capacity of a person of their size to tolerate that much alcohol in such a short time, without looking the least bit wrecked. But anyway…
A little more…
A film doesn’t need to be realistic to work. But it must be plausible. Actions or events must be logical within the universe in which they occur. That is not the case here. But at the same time, should I really be surprised?
Amber (Helena Howard)
I was saying, less than a month ago, that I am naive to keep believing that American horror films can be good. Here I am again choosing an American film hoping it would be good. No, I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece. But I was hoping for good entertainment, and that’s not what you get with Find Your Friends.
Rather than finding your friends, I suggest you find something else to watch. Unless, of course, you want to bitch about a woman who confuses feminism with egocentrism…
