Watch your drinks and your back, because this girls’ trip is going south fast. Shudder just released the trailer for their upcoming horror survival film Find Your Friends, and it’s certainly no walk in the park for a group of girls who find themselves stuck in the desert, at odds with both the elements and the people around them.
Directed by Izabel Pakzad from her own script, Find Your Friends stars Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, Helena Howard, Sophia Ali, Zión Moreno, Jake Manley, Israel Broussard, Harrison Sloan Gilbertson, and Chris Bauer. The film’s synopsis is as follows:
Amber and her four best friends flee Los Angeles for a girls’ trip in Joshua Tree, only to find themselves unwelcome in a desert town simmering with quiet hostility. As isolation sets in and encounters with aggressive locals grow more threatening, festering resentments within the group begin to surface. What begins as fun and reckless escape spirals into a violent struggle for control and survival, as past wounds and present dangers collide in a night that turns their trip into a revenge-fueled nightmare.
Find Your Friends serves as Pakzad’s feature directorial debut, after her short film Don’t Worry, It’s Gonna Be OK won numerous awards on the festival circuit. The film is produced by Pakzad, Allison Friedman, Andrea Iervolino, Luca Matrundola, Monika Bacardi, and Gary Michael Walters.
“I love genre films so much, but the final girl trope has always frustrated me—this insistence that women must be sweet and innocent to earn survival,” says Pakzad. “Find Your Friends rejects that entirely. My characters are vulgar, wild, and sexually empowered without consequence. They reclaim their power through violence and chaos rather than virtue. Young women in cinema are rarely allowed this kind of raw complexity without punishment. With this film, I'm not just challenging the final girl—I'm completely reinventing what she can be.”
The film joins Shudder’s ever growing lineup of original programming, which this month features the premiere of Tales From the Crypt, alongside Whistle, This Is Not a Test, Something Is About to Happen, The Terror: Devil in Silver, and more.
Find Your Friends premieres on Shudder on June 12.
