A group of young women fight for their lives when they are targeted by creeps in a desert holiday spot.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Izabel Pakzad
Starring: Helena Howard, Bella Thorne, Zión Moreno, Chloe Cherry, Sophia Ali, Jake Manley, Israel Broussard, Chris Bauer
Writer/director Izabel Pakzad's feature debut Find Your Friends is an American grindhouse cousin of the recent acclaimed British drama How to Have Sex. Both movies are centred on groups of young women who are so invested in having a good time they fail to look out for a vulnerable friend who falls victim to a sexual assault. In How to Have Sex, the rage and confusion was left unspoken, whereas here it's screamed at the top of its protagonist's (and the film's) lungs.
Among the group of young revellers here, Helena Howard's Amber is immediately recognisable as a final girl type. While her friends - Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry) and Maddy (Sophia Ali) - are busy getting high and getting off, Amber is brooding over recently being dumped. To rub salt into her wounds, her ex shows up with her replacement at the yacht party Amber and her friends are attending. Despite the big red flag draped around his shoulders, Amber makes out with douchebag Tye (Blaine Kern III) in the hopes of making her ex jealous. Left alone with Tye by her friends, Amber is sexually assaulted when he ignores her request to slow down. Intense with rage, Amber smashes a punch bowl over the creep's head, resulting in her friends being kicked off the yacht.
Rather than stopping to ask what might lead Amber to commit such a violent act, her friends victim blame her, accusing her of trying to ruin their holiday. Tensions rise when the group heads into the California desert where they have booked a rental villa. At a party that night Amber finds that mixing cocaine, molly and unprocessed trauma isn't a good idea, especially when another group of creepy men have set their sights on Amber and her friends.
The sun-drenched desert setting of Find Your Friends recalls Coralie Fargeat's Revenge, the best example of this type of feminist exploitation thriller of recent times. But Pakzad's debut has none of the cinematic invention of Fargeat's modern genre classic. It is a rather meat and potatoes grindhouse thriller, but to its credit it doesn't shy away from the sort of extreme violence that characterised such films in their 1970s heyday. It's customary for these movies to feature some male genital trauma when our heroines fight back, and Find Your Friends commits to this bit in wincing detail.
What elevates Pakzad's debut above its exploitation peers is how it has a little more on its mind than simply sticking a bunch of attractive young actresses in skimpy outfits and splashing them in corn syrup. Amber stands out as a protagonist thanks to a performance from Howard that captures the character's ragged state of mind. Amber isn't sure who she is more angry with: the abusive men who targeted her or the so-called friends whose narcissism allowed her to be victimised; and Howard plays this mix of frustration and anger like a boiling pot left unattended. Her fantastic turn in 2018's Madeline's Madeline should have made Howard an instant star, but it is only recently with this film and the meta-horror The Red Mask that she has begun to receive the lead roles she deserves. It is further proof that the horror genre is currently providing female stars with the sort of meaty roles denied them elsewhere.
Find Your Friends is on Shudder from June 12th.
