Like Peckinpah, Pakzad knows how to transmit true violence onto the screen in Find Your Friends. Where Pakzad excels is her refinement of the graphic violence Peckinpah reveled in. While the grand dismemberment scene is drawn out, with lots of stomach-turning detail, other bloody acts are done more abstractly or entirely offscreen. Pakzad does this in order to increase the impact of the bloodshed on the viewer, as what is left out makes the skin crawl harder in each case. While Peckinpah famously employed slow motion on his gore scenes, Pakzad uses similar practical camera effects to simulate intoxication. The results of the handheld angles, focus adjusting, and disorienting compositions play just like being f****d up at a party. I stopped drinking 32 years ago, but I can still recognize plastered when I see it.
Lola (Chloe Cherry) lies distressed on the desert ground in Find Your Friends. Courtesy of Shudder. A Shudder Release.
“Howard turns in a portrait of PTSD that would give Repulsion’s Deneuve shivers…”
Perhaps the biggest area Find Your Friends outguns Peckinpah in is how it captures and revolutionizes the twilight of the outlaw theme. Peckinpah was obsessed with the idea of old men who have spent their lives living outside of the law, and are now feeling their time closing in on them. In Find Your Friends, Pakzad brilliantly transfers this concept to party girls who are growing weary of ingesting booze and drugs every waking moment. The dialogue on the feeling of being retired at 21 is highly genuine, reflecting the exhaustion of both having fun and being fun nonstop. Just like Peckinpah’s doomed rebels, these female outlaws of intoxication have to come face to face with both their mortality as well as where their path will end. I just think Pakzad’s insights are more fascinating than Peckinpah’s, as Bloody Sam had that personal blind spot that he drank himself to death in.
By the way, Find Your Friends proves that Bella Thorne has arrived as a serious actress. Her level of realism here is off the charts, with a control over the wave of pacing that other performers would kill for. Cherry also puts in an outstanding acting job, as her drunken comet burns very brightly as it speeds fast to the ground. Moreno is perfect as the bubbly one who is always trying to keep everything nice. Ali is a piercing screen presence, bending light around her whenever she appears. But of course we can’t ignore the showstopper, Helena Howard. Howard turns in a portrait of PTSD that would give Repulsion‘s Deneuve shivers, a painstakingly genius breakdown into violent behavior worthy of Ms. 45. Find Your Friends is a powerful, blood-drenched triumph on what lies at the end of the party, waiting to dim the lights forever.
"…Bella Thorne has arrived as a serious actress."
