Find Your Friends – Movie Review | Shudder (3/5)

FIND YOUR FRIENDS on Shudder is a survival thriller about five friends who go on a girls’ trip to the desert and find pure hell. Elements of this movie deliver straight-up horror, but overall, it’s more of a survival story. Read our full Find Your Friends movie review here and watch it on Shudder!

FIND YOUR FRIENDS is a new Shudder release about a group of girls trying to keep their friendship alive as life is slowly pulling them apart. They are partying together in ways that downright terrify me, if I’m completely honest. Drugs and alcohol are consumed in quantities where I can feel my own body screaming for mercy on their behalf.

But hey, these young women are just that; young! They can party all night, take a nap, and get right back to it. Maybe this is also why they are a very unpopular (even unwelcome) addition to the Joshua Tree community in the desert. The non-stop partying is tiresome for all the people who are actually living there. Maybe that’s why they start disappearing one by one?!

Continue reading our Find Your Friends movie review below. Find it on Shudder from June 12, 2026.

From trauma to revenge

We’ve watched a lot of horror movies about grief and trauma manifesting itself in various ways. Find Your Friends delivers on this core subject as well, but in a classic survival thriller progression. The girls’ trip takes a little detour to go party on a yacht in Los Angeles before heading out into the desert. Joshua Tree, to be exact.

While on this boat, one of the girls has a terrible experience with an assault. Everyone is high, stoned, drunk, or a combination of all three. That’s why nobody really manages to discover what happened until the girl reacts in a seemingly insane fashion.

This results in them getting kicked off the yacht, where they all stick together.

I loved their friendship and loyalty at first. Sadly, it does become clear that the partying gets first billing in their respective lives. Once the substances go into their systems, they tend to forget about looking out for one another. Well, most of them, anyway.

One girl is more loyal and protective. The one who wants to become a nurse, which I loved, because it fits the profile!

In any case, this isn’t a summary. Still, let me just say that while the frat bros at the yacht were terrible, the trashy desert bros are no better. In fact, they have much more in common with each other than the girls they are so desperate to attract.

Fierce casting in this survival thriller

Not many are likable as the story progresses, but the actors deliver exactly what’s needed. Overall, you will probably find yourself watching actors you really like doing awful things. Maybe they’re just being indifferent due to drugs. In other cases, however, they are just downright evil in their actions!

The five friends in Find Your Friends are portrayed by actors you’ll probably recognize. We have Bella Thorne (The Babysitter, Girl), Chloe Cherry (Euphoria), Zión Moreno (Corporate Retreat), and Helena Howard & Sophia Ali (both were in The Wilds).

Of course, we also have some wonderful talent portraying the male characters (most of them real douchebags). You’ll see Blaine Kern III, Jake Manley (The Order), Israel Broussard (Happy Death Day), Harrison Sloan Gilbertson (In The Tall Grass), and Chris Bauer (True Blood, His & Hers).

What’s in a title?

For Finding Your Friends, the title of the survival thriller with brutal horror elements, has several meanings. There’s the very literal issue of finding your friends when either they or you have gotten lost. Also, there’s the more philosophical approach that could also be described as finding your people. Your true friends, who would never abandon you.

Finally, there’s the most straightforward meaning of this being the name of a tracking app that all five friends use. As a result, they can find each other. Of course, the downside of this is that anyone else can also find them if they get their hands on just one phone belonging to someone in the group.

Oh yeah, and being out in the desert, cell phone reception can be spotty. Plus, not unlike an iconic sci-fi horror movie, there’s the issue of no one being able to hear you scream. You don’t have to be out in space. Being out in the desert, far from everyone else, will have the same result.

Now that is pure horror for most people, but especially anyone alone who sees three drunk bros heading their way!

Watch Find Your Friends on Netflix

Find Your Friends is written and directed by Izabel Pakzad, who does not hold back. It’s based on her own real-life experience of being harassed by a group of men during a trip to Joshua Tree. Then she was chased by the same group of men. This was during a trip with her best friends, so more details from that specific trip may be in this movie.

While it paints a pretty grim picture of many young men, it’s hardly glorifying the girls either. For the record, I think a lot of men will suffer in a downright visceral way during some of the final moments.

Other men will celebrate the action of the young women fighting back. And yes, there are good guys portrayed in this movie as well. You might not recognize them at first. They tend to be the ones who either react to help or simply expect some decency from people visiting their hometown.

In many ways, Find Your Friends is not an easy watch. That’s why it’s a good thing that its runtime is right about the 90-minute mark. That’s enough time to set the stage and make a point, but not too long, which would have resulted in viewers getting distracted by their phones.

Overall, we see the characters act in stupid ways. Mostly due to being under the influence of all kinds of substances, but that’s the nature of much partying. As such, it paints an all-too-realistic picture of being young today. It also highlights the dangers and how fighting back can sometimes seem like the only answer. Consequences be damned!

Find Your Friends starts streaming on Shudder on June 12, 2026.

Details

Director: Izabel Pakzad
Screenwriter: Izabel Pakzad
Cast: Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, Helena Howard, Sophia Ali, Zión Moreno, Jake Manley, Israel Broussard, Harrison Sloan Gilbertson, Chris Bauer