FILM FRENZY

Helena Howard and Bella Thorne in Find Your Friends (Photos: Shudder)

By Matt Brunson

FIND YOUR FRIENDS
★★½ (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Izabel Pakzad
STARS Helena Howard, Bella Thorne

About 15 minutes into Find Your Friends, I was ready to bolt from my seat. About 15 minutes from the end of Find Your Friends, I was glued to my seat.

It’s unusual for a movie to generate such extreme reactions, but then again, Find Your Friends is an extreme movie. Drawing inspiration from an unfortunate personal experience, writer-director Izabel Pakzad adopts an in-your-face, go-for-broke attitude that will divide audiences as neatly as Moses parted the Red Sea.

There’s nothing about the opening stretch that’s remotely enjoyable, so if a viewer can get past this section, then it’s probably a go for the rest of the picture. The movie begins with five female buddies — the pensive Amber (Helena Howard), the concerned Zosia (Zión Moreno), the hard-partying Lavinia (Bella Thorne), the even-harder-partying Lola (Chloe Cherry), and the comparatively nondescript Maddy (Sophia Ali) — spending time on a party boat before they head to California’s Joshua Tree area for a desert raver. Everyone on the vessel is getting drunk, getting high, and getting some (or so they hope). We’re introduced to the five protagonists as the music blares, the camera jitters, and the women speak in nonstop Vulgarese™, with a string of profanities that would embarrass even Full Metal Jacket’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. As filmed, it’s all very ugly and off-putting, further diminished by the fact that seemingly every single individual on the boat, male or female, appears so imbecilic that they likely couldn’t spell the word “keg” even if you spotted them the “k” and the “g.”

One of the girlfriends, Amber, fights off a sexual assault on the boat but doesn’t tell anyone about it. This largely informs her mindset and her actions as the group continues with its itinerary — she’s wary of every man she encounters, while her oblivious pals think she’s merely being an oversensitive drag. After the group gets kicked off the yacht once she smashes a punch bowl over her assailant’s head — everyone assumes she’s the villain, jealous because he’s flirting with another woman — they end up at an Airbnb (their only neighbor is an older man who complains about the noise they’re making) before heading out for a night of endless parties.

The ladies meet a trio of guys who they blow off after the dudes make them feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, they’ll eventually be seeing them again. All the while, Amber continues to remain traumatized by her encounter, which puts a rift between her and the other four. Amber feels abandoned and betrayed by them while they feel she’s being unfair and perhaps even purposely sabotaging their vacation. It’s in these discussions that the title comes into focus — yes, it refers to the phone locator (employed in the story), but it also suggests that it’s often hard for women to locate the sort of support they need from each other in crucial times.

The longer the film plays, the darker it gets, as the men brutalize and even murder whichever of the five women they can corner. It’s all very disturbing, and, intentional or not, it loops back to that nigh unwatchable opening, when many viewers will have experienced a common moviegoing reaction: “I don’t care what happens to these characters.” That dismissal is thrown back into the viewers’ faces: Many will feel that these women are obnoxious and unlikable, but neither they nor any other female under these or any other circumstances deserve to be tossed into such a punishing maelstrom of toxic masculinity, one from which there often is no escape.

Since audiences generally like some measure of catharsis in their cinematic diet, the final portion finds the tables turned, leading to one gory scene sure to leave even eunuchs wincing. At any rate, it’s a marvelously orchestrated sequence, so strong that the epilogue comes off as flat and unfulfilling. Thus, Find Your Friends ends not with a bang but with a whimper, which is otherwise not one of the reactions triggered throughout the course of this messy, maddening but ultimately meaningful movie.