By Dan Skip Allen

As years have progressed, women have gotten more freedom. Meaning they are allowed to do more things and enjoy their lives like men have done for many years. Now, all of a sudden, women get out of high school and go to college and have a freedom they hadn’t had before. Drinking, doing drugs, and partying have become the norm. Similar to men, this kind of behavior can lead to problems for women. “Find My Friends” is a film that shows that acting up the way that young women sometimes do can be a detriment to them more than they’d ever admit. That’s why films like this are important for audiences to see. They can see the errors of their way and possibly teach other young girls the right way to do things.

Amber (Helena Howard) Lavinia (Bella Thorne) Zodiac (Zion Moreno) Maddy (Sophia Taylor Ali) Lola (Chloe Cherry) are all partying on a yacht with a bunch of other twentysomethings. They’re drinking and dancing and having fun. This leads to an encounter that makes Amber jealous of an ex-boyfriend on the boat. She decides to kick a random guy, which causes a problem with the rest of the people, including the owner of the yacht. The women leave to go back to their airbnb in the desert adjacent to Joshua Tree, a sacred spot in the California desert. Men in a white truck follow them, which causes another issue. Police get involved, but this is just the beginning of a crazy fight for survival in the middle of a desert.

Adding to their problems, the girls decide to go to a local bar where they momentarily enjoy themselves singing karaoke and dancing. They meet a guy named Coby (Harrison Gilbertson). He’s charming and friendly at first, but he ends up being a precursor of what this story is ultimately about. These women don’t have control and can’t stay out of trouble because of their lack of discipline. Drinking and partying end up being their downfall. They can’t help themselves. That’s why they become prey for men looking for sex and to have a good time. I don’t condone this kind of behavior, but it’s an honest reaction to how these women act. Men assume they want to have fun with them. Including having sexual relations. Whether it’s wrong or right, it’s the implied thing for them to do.

The filmmaker Izabel Pakzed crafted this story, hopefully, as a warning to all young women and girls who desire their freedom. Going out with their friends, shopping, going to restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and so forth come with a price. They could potentially be prey to lonely men looking to have a good time and satiate their sexual urges. As a woman, she comes from the right perspective, and she understands this point of view. This is the person who can tell a story like this. I would rather see a woman write and direct a film like this rather than a man. It may come across the wrong way from a man’s perspective. Hopefully, women will see this and get the right perspective they need to get out of this story. 

The thriller aspects of the story were just precursors to the events that happened before, and the bickering and arguing between the girls is the end result of the thriller. They are in a fight for survival against stronger threats than them. The environment they are in is unforgiving, and the drugs and alcohol cause hallucinations in the desert. I wouldn’t call this a great revenge thriller because of everything that came before these elements. I can’t say they were people I cared about all that much also because of the earlier events in the film. I’m caught in the middle with my emotions regarding if I genuinely care about what happened to these people in the third act of the film. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place mentally because I don’t want to see them get hurt but I also think they deserve what they have coming to them because of the way they added before the end of the film.

All in all, “Find Your Friends” is a film that is trying to teach young women a lesson. It puts us the viewer in the shoes of these women and what they’re going through but also shows the mistakes they are making from the beginning of the movie until the end. I don’t condone anything bad happening to women in general but this is a film that is trying to show the problems young women can get into when they are out carousing, partying, drinking alcohol and doing drugs. Men are going to look at them as sexual prey; it’s a natural thing for them to do. The film captures that perfectly. The thriller components are just an addition to everything that came before in the context of the movie. Despite my misgivings, most of the film works. Hopefully, young women will learn a lesson by watching this movie and be aware of their surroundings when they go out on the town with their friends at night or on weekends or even on vacations to foreign countries.

🌟 🌟 🌟 1/2