Find Your Friends Director, Bella Thorne, Sophia Ali, & Chloe Cherry Talk NSFW Thriller Movie
Find Your Friends director Izabel Pakzad and stars Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, and Sophia Ali spoke about the bold thriller movie, which is Pakzad’s directorial debut. The four women discussed the film’s party scenes, its intense final act, and its propulsive nature. Also featuring Helena Howard and Zion Moreno, it is now streaming on Shudder.
“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,” says the official synopsis for Find Your Friends.
Tyler Treese: Izabel, I know this was based on a real incident for you, and it is crazy. You basically lived Steven Spielberg’s Duel. How was it taking this terrifying lived experience and then fictionalizing it and expanding it into a movie? Did you find that therapeutic in a way?
Izabel Pakzad: Oh my God, yeah. Completely. It felt so therapeutic and just like, I don’t know. The movie obviously is not just based on that one experience, but I kind of brought other elements in that I was dealing with. Leaving college and sort of being stuck in weird party rituals. In a way that’s how me and my friends learned how to socialize at that time. And coming to terms with that too, and like how that carried over into the adult world, and then taking it to Joshua Tree and using that real-life experience was sort of up and amazing at the same time.
Bella, you and the whole group are having a great time early on. How is it shooting the party scenes? Does that even feel like work, or is it actually weird pretending to have the time of your lives in a controlled environment?
Bella Thorne: That’s a good question. I guess it’s a little bit of both. I definitely had tons of fun. When it came to being the more extroverted version of her, I felt that she definitely was the one. If there was a character in the group to be all like yas, like that would be her.
But you’re also in a controlled, as you said, environment, and you have to make sure that you’re on your cues and that way your Ps and Qs, they sit, but at the same time you’re also like, “does this scene need a twerk? Does it want one?”
Every scene needs a twerk for sure.
Bella Thorne: Right? [laughs]
Chloe, you have some hilarious lines in this film. I wrote this one down. I didn’t wanna misquote it. “Your dick is so small that when you tried fuck to me, I thought I was being fingered by a cashew.” These are just wild things that you’re saying.
Chloe Cherry: So, I remember when we were making this movie. Once we were towards the end of it, I was like, wait a second. I feel like I almost had too much fun making it. And I was like, “Did I not take that project seriously enough?” I’m not even kidding. Like, when I walked away from it, I was like, “I actually think I had too much fun on set because I focused too much on making myself laugh and people around me laugh, rather than just doing hard work.”
Like all I was focused on, like the whole like month and a half we were working on the movie was just like having fun and laughing and everyone was so funny. And I remember when we were done, I was like, “I think I actually had too much fun and I didn’t work hard enough.” But then, once I saw it, I was like, “Oh! No.” It kind of did read well on screen that I was actually genuinely having so much fun and constantly just joking around with everybody, and it was just really funny.
Sophia there’s a lot of stress for everybody on this girl’s trip. We see Maddy try to support Amber, and then she kind of gets pushed away. What appealed to you about really getting to explore these changing dynamics in these deep-rooted friendships?
Sophia Ali: I think what’s really cool about it is that a lot of the girls’ intentions are hidden until they’re not. Like, it’s sort of a reveal thing. Like reveal the journey as you, like, go on. And like, Maddy’s intentions are like feelings towards Amber and stuff, but it’s open to interpret. You don’t really see them until she really gets a chance to confront her. Then you’re kind of like, “Oh, whoa.” Maddy’s mad, but it’s still unique to her.
Izabel, as I mentioned, there’s a great energy to this film. It’s very propulsive. Whether it’s a party sequence or the intense scenes on the road, how is it finding that frenetic pace to the film but not wearing out the viewer? I thought you found a really good pace for it.
Izabel Pakzad: Thank you. You know, I feel like that’s something I really work with my DP on, you know what I mean? Like, having it feel like everything’s happening in real time and we’re following Amber, and we’re following this journey to the desert, and it feels real, you know what I mean? And we’re being taken along this ride.
I know the girls go hard in the movie, but like, I feel like it’s really realistic in a way, in many ways, the film up until the end, probably. I feel like that grounds it in some sort of reality that makes it feel like the pace makes sense, you know what I mean? Like, this is the realistic journey of going on this girls’ trip, and then in the editing room, just yeah. Finding that kind of balance.
Not cutting away too soon, but staying long enough where it feels like, okay, we’re here. We’re here, and we’re feeling that.
Bella, there are some really intense scenes in the last act where you and the other women are striking back and not being victims. It reminded me of your work in Saint Clare a bit. What did that mean for you to get a scene where the women really get agency and especially when they’re not being supported systematically by the police and everything else going on?
Bella Thorne: Well, when I read this script, I was on a plane, which is a great place to read a script. Especially one as traumatizing as this one. And then my partner, my fiance, he kept asking me what was wrong? Why was I in a weird mood the whole flight? I was like, “Because I just read this script. Okay?” And so then I got an argument with him on the plane [laughs].
So it was, it was off to a great start already, and I think by the ending I was like, “Oh, thank goodness, when I was reading it. Thank goodness. Cut it all the way off, make it a nub, no longer there.” Without giving so much away. But I was like, okay, good. Because I was happy that Izabel, as the writer, put me through all of this trauma while reading to give it to me at the end, something that I needed, and the payback that felt necessary to, well, what women have to deal with all the time.
So, yeah, I was always really excited when we were getting to that last portion of filming because I am nervous, of course, you know, you only have so many days. You’ve got your big ending of the movie. It’s around six, seven pages, and so you wanna make sure you have enough time to really, and then you’ve got the, you know, the gun and the action stuff.
And so it was, it was definitely nerve-racking to make sure that we got everything that we needed and what Izabel needed from us. But I was also stoked because hello, you know? And it was fun to film. Jake seemed totally fine. It was fine, it was such a fun scene to film. It was like good. It was like the best vibe. Everyone, it was good vibes. Like Jake was tied down, and he couldn’t get up, so I just hung out with him. I was going through my phone the other day, and I’m just like chilling with him, with my drinking head, just like sitting right next to him as he is like tied off with a fake penis out. It’s some of the most ridiculous stuff you’ve ever seen in your life.
Chloe, there’s this scene early on in the car where all the women are exchanging these sex stories, and they’re laughing, but they’re all various levels of traumatic events that they’re sharing. And I feel like that’s gonna be sadly, really resonant and relatable to a lot of women that watch this film. How is it just filming that scene and, and is that something, like, what was your thoughts on that scene? I thought it was so interesting.
Chloe Cherry: Well, I had to make a bunch of stuff up and like, you know, obviously things were like in the script and stuff. Yeah, I guess I’ve kind of just noticed that there’s just this thing that I feel like women constantly joke about of just being like, “Oh, like boys will be boys.” Like “Of course he wants to fuck” or whatever. I just noticed that some people talk like that, it is kind of a thing that’s been portrayed in media many times, that yeah, it just felt good to just talk about it with our girlfriends, but we all experienced different stuff.
I also just think that these sex stories aren’t necessarily traumatizing. Some of them are just kind of embarrassing. Like, I think one of my stories is that like, my, like some guy I’m seeing’s mom walks in on us or something. Like, that’s just extremely embarrassing, and I feel like that can happen to just anybody of any gender.
don’t like to think of it so much as traumatizing. I don’t know. I feel like a lot of sex can be awkward, and it’s not as sexy as we wanna imagine it to be, and I feel like, I mean, it’s happened to me before, where like I have like dumb sex stories as well, but I don’t see it as like traumatizing. It’s more just embarrassing.
That makes total sense.
Cherry: I just hope that people aren’t going through a lot of sexual trauma genuinely.
Pakzad: At the end of all the sex stories, Lavinia says, “What about you? Do you have a story?” And Amber goes, “No, I don’t have a story. I don’t have anything funny.” Then Lola goes, “These stories aren’t funny, they’re tragic,” but she’s laughing as she’s saying that.
I do feel like that actually that line sort of sums up the entire car scene, in a way. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s all funny, and we’re laughing and talking about these sex stories and whatever, but then there’s something degrading about these stories as well. But like, the girls are just laughing it off because that’s sort of like what they’re taught to do.
Cherry: Totally. Well, it’s also kind of like all you really can do at the end of the day. It’s funny how, like, when girls get together, and they talk about sex, it’s all about, “oh my God, like all these things were so weird.” And then when guys get together and talk about sex, all they do is just make up and lie to each other about stuff that never happened. They just make up lies to each other. Should I just go back and forth, lying and making things up? But girls are actually truthful to each other when they talk about sex, when it’s just girls.
Sophia, I have to ask, I’m a huge fan of the Uncharted video games, and I thought you did Chloe such justice in that movie. Are you hopeful that we’ll get a sequel down the line?
Sophia Ali: Yeah, yeah, of course I would. Yeah, I would love that. Yeah, hopefully,
Izabel, I saw Gaspar Noé was in the special thanks. I was just curious about who your directorial influences are because I could definitely see some of Gaspar in this film.
Pakzad: Gaspar is definitely one of them, and he’s so great and lovely and helped me with this movie in some ways and gave me notes. But I would say, you know, Coralie Fargeat is like a huge inspiration. Her first movie, Revenge, was a big inspiration for this movie, and I love The Substance. Julia Ducournau, who directed Raw and Titane, I love her films. Really bold and just unapologetic. Then, Harmony Korine, for sure. Just people pushing the boundaries and unafraid and making things that feel authentic to them. Filmmakers who are doing that are the filmmakers who inspire me.
Thanks to Izabel Pakzad, Bella Thorne Sophia Ali, and Chloe Cherry for taking the time to talk about Find Your Friends.
Source: Comingsoon.net