Rating: NR | Runtime: 89 minutes
Release Date: June 12th, 2026 (USA)
Studio: Shudder
Director(s): Izabel Pakzad
Writer(s): Izabel Pakzad

Lovin’ on you.

Inspired by her own trauma while partying with friends and being chased by a group of guys in a road rage incident, writer/director Izabel Pakzad wields the revenge fantasy at the core of Find Your Friends to expose the toxic masculinity women face every day of their lives as well as to subvert the final girl trope from innocent survivor to violent arbiter of justice. She’s crafted a drug-fueled rager in Joshua Tree that shows the patriarchy is about more than just men.

We meet Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zión Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Maddy (Sophia Ali) having fun aboard a friend’s yacht the day before they head out to the desert. They’re drinking heavily and dancing to their hearts content while flirting with the men trying their hardest to get inside their pants. Amber is looking for an escape from a bad relationship only to discover her ex is there. So, she seeks out a means to make him jealous.

The quintet is loud and vulgar as they objectify the men surrounding them. They push Amber towards one of them having heard rumors about his sexual prowess and assuming a little fun might clear her mind of past demons. While she’s all for a good time, however, we can see the situation is a bit more complicated than that. Seeing the ex. Drinking more. Throwing herself at this other guy. Amber is using him to perform for the crowd and her friends should realize it.

Well, the result leads to a traumatic moment that leaves Amber suffering from PTSD throughout the rest of their vacation. When she inevitably acts impulsively out of anger and fear, Lavinia and the others chalk it up to her getting trashed and going too far. They believe that she simply “cannot handle” the excess like they can. That she’s “ruining” the vibe. They’re so self-consumed by their own need to drown out the noise that they don’t realize Amber exited the train.

Here’s a woman who’s ready to grow up and leave this life of dangerous inhibition behind with college graduation looming. Amber is spiraling and calling out for help only to find them all plying her with more drugs. They still want to lose control. They want to stay in this space of zero consequences despite the very real consequences their actions face. So, Amber pulling away starts to feel like a threat to their own entertainment. She’s dismissed as a killjoy.

We know differently, though. Pakzad is continuously putting us into Amber’s mind to see how her trauma is affecting present situations. We see the flashbacks and understand the weight of her reactions even if they might seem too strong from the outside. Her friends should know better. Since they don’t, however, the moments where Amber’s reactions are definitely warranted start to feel like she’s “crying wolf.” Rather than implicitly believe her fears, they turn their backs.

It’s an intriguing dynamic not just because it causes us to wonder if these women are actually good friends or just kindred spirits where it comes to drug use, but also because it reveals how ingrained dealing with toxic masculinity is to their everyday lives. Lavinia has literally trained herself to think of sexual abuse as “not that bad” so she can continue enjoying the sexual lifestyle she craves. Maddy aggressively provokes men believing they’re all too chicken to act.

And all the while Amber cannot help but have her eyes opened to the truth—that they should be afraid of what these men might do. Men they know on the yacht who tell women not to be a “tease.” Men like Russell (Chris Bauer) threatening them to keep the noise down at their Airbnb because some people actually live in this desert. Men like a trio of predators stalking them with ill intent and a fearless ambivalence to getting caught.

It leads to a second act that feels somewhat redundant as it perpetually reminds us of Amber’s trauma while letting her friends ignore it and a wild third act that embraces the bloody vengeance women the world over dream about inflicting upon their abusers. And Pakzad makes good on her reinvention of the “final girl” in the process by letting the carnage unfold with zero interest in the aftermath. Those last screams are just primal releases now instead of pure relief.

Find Your Friends doesn’t always therefore work, but it does effectively get its point across. My biggest issue is the way it ignores its dead women as quickly as its men considering the former consists of the two who most readily throw themselves into the fire. One could argue it skirts with victim blaming, but those victims also victim-blamed Amber … so maybe that’s intentional? They’re the women propping up the system? Intent and execution sometimes struggle to mesh.

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Sophia Ali, Zión Moreno, Helena Howard, Chloe Cherry, and Bella Thorne in Izabel Pakzad’s FIND YOUR FRIENDS. Courtesy of Shudder. A Shudder Release.