FilmIzabel Pakzad’s First Feature Makes US Premiere at Fantastic FestImages Courtesy Izabel Pakzad

Content Warnings: Discussions of Assault and Violence Against Women

I went into the Fantastic Fest screening of FIND YOUR FRIENDS (dir. Izabel Pakzad, 2025) with absolutely no previous knowledge about the film other than the scant info in the film guide, and I walked out feeling absolutely electrified. It is the first movie I’ve seen in a while where the audience was literally cheering for characters to be killed, and the sensation of watching that from a female audience was, to say the least, thrilling. I grew up watching horror, whereas as teens, we would laugh, ooh and ahh, groan when things got cringey, and scream as warranted. But it’s been a while since a film riled up an audience, or me, for that matter.

The film is part girl’s trip, part horror, as it follows five friends on a drunken, drugged vacation to Joshua Tree for a party in the desert. The main character is Amber (Helena Howard, previously in I Saw the TV Glow, 2024), who struggles to cope with the party girl culture when her friends leave her with a stranger on a yacht, and she is sexually assaulted. Amber spirals as the friends have the worst possible response: They start to gaslight Amber, questioning whether she was too drunk and insisting they thought she “wanted him”.

As the young women head off to Joshua Tree, they land at an Airbnb surrounded by the desert and various “redneck” men. They are there to attend a concert and part, but no matter where they go, because they are young, beautiful, and confident, they encounter men who, at every turn, are a disappointment.

Tempers are on edge under the baking desert sun as the women fight over Amber’s slowly unraveling mental state. Here, the film is overtly critical of toxic femininity, a topic rarely covered in today’s film landscape. The women get trashed only to wake up hungover and start drinking again. They leave each other at parties, see sexual exploits (and assault) as a rite of passage, and rarely surface to the level of acknowledging the harm all this creates.

Despite the possibility for each character to feel like a stereotype, the film does its best to present each woman as multifaceted. One scene that stood out to me was the pool scene at the Airbnb. The girls are drinking and dancing, playing loud music. They begin chanting “loving on you, loving on you” as they circle each other one by one. For each woman, the others provide manifestations of their future lives, and we learn that each of them is actually intelligent, educated, and talented in one way or another.

This scene invokes an almost witchy vibe. It plucks something out of female culture that is often derided — the idea that we can manifest what we desire — and gives it a subtle power.

As the women head to a concert and then a drunken afterparty, things get worse as several local men begin following the women and harassing them. Amber is put in danger by leaving the party, but her friends let her go. Amber is almost assaulted by the men, only to escape at the last minute.

For watchers who struggle with female friendship, the film will feel all too familiar. That’s part of the horror here. It’s not just that women aren’t safe anywhere; it’s that they aren’t safe even among themselves.

The film’s best parts are its surprisingly violent vengeance moments. In the end, women watching the film get to witness something rarely (if ever) presented on film — revenge assault not on a woman, but on a man. This is the part where the audience, made mostly of women, hooted and hollared, screaming for the characters to carry out their very bloody, horrific actions in excruciating detail. (The last scene, in particular, is creepy with a capital C that stands for CASTRATION — You can guess why.)

It’s clear that women need and want the release of watching raw, complex, violent horror films. With beautiful cinematography of the desert in aching blues and oranges, the film is captivating and hard to look away from.

Some audience members may stay away from this one because the director, Izabel Pakzad, is dating James Franco, who was accused of sexual harassment and fraud in 2021 in a settled suit. It’s a curious connection, given the film’s themes and on-screen sexual assault. It certainly gave me pause when I learned about it, and I think it will draw a lot of conversations.

This review is part of Interstellar Flight Press’ coverage of the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival, hosted by Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas.

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FIND YOUR FRIENDS Upends Revenge Horror was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.