Dallas Film Now.

Ah to be young, attractive, and completely hooked on the idea of drinking and mushrooming yourself into an unconscious state in the California desert. That’s the general plan for Amber (Helena Howard) and her best friends in Izabel Pakzad’s debut Find Your Friends, a film that could be considered horror-adjacent as it’s party atmosphere continually rubs against some of the genre’s well-tread conventions.

Those conventions include the modern theme of suppressed trauma and more classically recognized narratives involving homegrown locals violently opposed to the sleek outsiders rampaging on their quiet territory…. both explored here to marginally successful ends. It’s not quite The Hills Have Eyes (1977) or Haute Tension (2003), but Find Your Friends does end up in some very dark places.

But before the film gets there, it spends the first third in a brightly euphoric glaze of bumping music, swaggering hips, and devil-may-care attitudes as Amber, Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Maddy (Sophia Ali), Lola (Chloe Cherry), and Zosia (Zion Moreno) first get thrown of a yacht party due to Amber’s reaction to an overzealous male boytoy. The women then speed off into the desert for a weekend of debauchery where more partying ensues, but it’s here that the fractures of reality and unspoken trauma begin to surface for young Amber. Everyone else just wants to have fun, but she’s struggling with personal issues that threaten to derail the good times.

It’s also here in this sun-drenched wonderland that several locals begin to insert their toxic presence on the women, first in the guise of a crabby neighbor (so good to see The Wire alum Chris Bauer), then by a trio if good ‘ol boys who resent the women’s presence with a decidedly malevolent streak. One by one, the women begin to disappear, helped not by their factitious resentments and jealousy that seem to grow as the partying (and drugs) continues.

All of this is boiled into a climax both preposterously violent and somewhat satisfying. But what’s not satisfying is Find Your Friends as a whole. First blasting onto the scene in Josephine Decker’s brilliant Madeline’s Madeline (2018), Howard mimics some of that character’s hyper-active fissions with the world. She gives another compelling character study, however, it’s buried beneath some monosyllabic fellow performances whose bluster is less than engaging. I don’t want to detract from the very real motives behind Amber’s virulent rage in the end (and a final closing shot that’s very punk rock oriented and haunting), but I just kept thinking to myself these are not very good friends- and I didn’t care what happened to them. For a film whose focus is rage and survival, it doesn’t have enough to make a lasting impact.

Find Your Friends will begin streaming on the Shudder Channel on Friday June 12th.