I felt poised to like writer-director Izabel Pakzad’s feature debut, “Find Your Friends.” I cut my cinephile teeth on the meat and bones of horror and thrillers. I am a woman in my 20s who often can’t get enough of stories about female friendships, their intimacy and imperfections, and trials and tribulations. I like to see Bella Thorne’s name on a cast list, and I find Chloe Cherry’s persona entertaining. The brand of ditsy Gen-Z humor showcased in titles like “Assassination Nation” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is on the rolodex of my comedic appeals. The itemized to-do list, however, goes unchecked, and the film is likely to poke, prod, stab, and sting at the ribs of its demographic until their hope for redemption runs out.
Amber (Helena Howard), Livinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zion Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali) are a group of friends on a college break looking for the ultimate escape. Destination uno on this list is a yacht party, serving as the extended pregame for their trip. Bottles are essentially bottomless, and the girls embark on round one of getting sloshed. But after Amber is assaulted, unbeknownst to her friends, the tone of her getaway changes gears from indulgence to suppression. Every interaction with a man after this point begins on a fraught note, one only affirmed by their eventual behavior.
When the girls jump ship and head to Joshua Tree, indulging in cocaine, ketamine, mushrooms, and good old-fashioned liquor, the group basks in whatever dopamine rush is at closest reach. Meanwhile, Amber, while still participating in the drug use, is reeling from her traumatic experience, and it’s driving her friends mad (namely Thorne’s Livinia, who cares about nothing more than getting high and getting guys). Only Zosia tends to check in on Amber, but even so, she only scratches the surface of the bare minimum.
Despite their determination to keep their bender unharmed, the friends’ desire for reckless abandon is inevitably soured by a hostile neighbor of their Airbnb (who demands quiet), a predatory trio of local men (who demand access to the girls), and still, for some reason, Amber (who not so much demands, but pleads for empathetic friends and a modicum of pragmatism when it comes to their self-preservation).
“Find Your Friends” aims for the intersection of “How to Have Sex” and “Assassination Nation”: the desire path that exists between examining consent in party culture and commenting on misogynistic loathing directed at young women. And while likeability is certainly not a requirement (frankly, moral grey and mistakes are vital to authentic storytelling about the volatility of female friendship), this group of girls hardly feel like friends. They don’t have each other’s backs in any regard. The lack of empathy and care they show to one another is not only preposterous for a so-called friend group, but also completely unbelievable in a dynamic of women. It’s incredibly frustrating to see the screenplay imbue the girls with naivety to the relentless cultural conditioning every woman on this earth endures from adolescence until death.
Pakzad’s portrayal of a party girl posse is founded entirely on drug lust, promiscuity, and a penchant for songs about p*ssy and butt sluts. The stereotypes and shallow thought pool that comprise “Find Your Friends” aren’t self-aware enough to be parody, nor malicious enough to be mockery. Instead, the film is an amorphous storyboard of tacky, thoughtless proclamations on the consequences of toxic patriarchy (made even more perturbing by the fact that, despite trying to exist in the correct philosophy that women are not to blame for cultural victimhood, this film does not allow the girls to make an informed decision to literally save their lives).
Further, the villainy of the film’s central trio of men is subtextually tied to their status as locals of this transient town (and if it is not intentional, it is neglectful). With an implied lower tax bracket and a sense of being stuck living in a space only visited by the more privileged for leisure, it recalls the similar portrayal of working-class Brits as antagonists in “Eden Lake.” Here, “Find My Friends” does little to deter the idea that this gaggle of poor, rural men relies on acts of fear and violence for entertainment and fulfillment in a life that must be drearily dull due to the limits of their circumstances. Aside from their blanket misogyny, notes of class envy are at play, but not with any sharpened intention or nuance.
Pakzad’s thesis appears to be that men are scary, predatory monsters. It’s vapid, coarse, and completely fruitless. Yet it passes through the screen with a confounding confidence, as if any of its ideas were revelatory, any of its characters tangible, or any of its stylistic choices executed with voice. Pakzad’s men are fearsome and calculated, while the women are largely, frankly, hollow between the ears: perpetually blinded by instant gratification, selfishness, and ignorance. It’s difficult to locate the tension in this “thriller,” where, until a rushed attempt at redemption, the women are at fault for their own helplessness. The verve and self-efficacy of something like “Death Proof” is nowhere to be found, nor is there the tragic isolation of a film like “Alone.” Instead, in the film’s blitzed, barren delirium, there is only frustration.
There’s respect to be had for films that take big swings, potentially even risking offense to deliver their thesis with gusto, but “Find Your Friends” is a sloppy, party porn massacre of themes. Even in the sinew, I struggle to find the point.
