Finding Emily (2026) Focus/Comedy RT: 111 minutes Rated PG-13 (sexual references, language, some crude material, drug references) Director: Alicia MacDonald Screenplay: Rachel Hirons Music: Morgan Kibby Cinematography: Rachel Clark Release date: August 28, 2026 (US) Cast: Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Sadie Soverall, Cora Kirk, Jack Riddiford, Isabella Laughland, Nadia Parkes, Minnie Driver, Timothy Innes, Anthony J. Abraham, Kat Ronney, Amber Grappy, Phil Wang, Fiona Allen, Clara Lioe, Yali Topol Margalith.
Rating: ***
Romance in the social media age, it’s complicated. A grand romantic gesture can be blown way out of proportion turning Lance Romance into a creepy stalker once everybody starts chiming in. I get it. There are a good many creeps out there; it pays to be cautious. At the same time, there are a few genuine romantics just looking to make a connection. I should know; I used to be one of them.
Now what happens when signals somehow get crossed? It gets the rom-com treatment, of course. That brings me to Finding Emily, a good-natured and surprisingly insightful piece about looking for love in a time when everybody and their sister feels compelled to make their views on whatever known to the whole world via social media platforms. It’s in this world that we find Owen (Fearn, Alien: Romulus), a socially awkward sound engineer at a student union bar at fictional Manchester City University. One night, he meets this girl and immediately falls for her. They share a dance before she has to dash off to a party. Before she leaves, he gets her name “Emily” and phone number. In her haste, she missed a digit. Now he has no way of contacting her. Or does he?
Owen decides to look for Emily around the school. Somebody points him towards a girl named Emily Raine (Rice, Mean Girls), a third-year psychology student trying to finish her thesis. She has an interesting hypothesis. She believes love is a form of insanity and a vestigial evolutionary impulse. She hasn’t had much luck in that department herself. She still hasn’t gotten over a failed relationship with a fellow psych major a few years earlier. She, of course, is not the right Emily. Upon meeting Owen, she decides to make him her case study under the guise of helping him locate his Emily or, as she calls her, his “actual manic pixie dream girl”.
The aforementioned grand gesture is Owen sending anonymous e-mails to every Emily enrolled at the school. It quickly becomes controversial with one of the Emilys, an outspoken feminist (Ronney, Dinosaur), leading a movement to vilify “Email Guy”. He becomes a media sensation when he appears on a podcast and performs a song he wrote about his Emily.
As Owen continues his quest and Emily R. works towards finishing her thesis, something completely expected happens. They start to develop feelings for each other. Now this could easily blow up when (there is no if) Owen finds out what Emily R. is really up to. It could also get complicated when (again, there is no if) the Emily he’s been looking for finally surfaces. None of this should be a surprise if you know how rom-coms work.
Director Alicia MacDonald, making her feature film debut with Finding Emily, colors outside the lines of the genre by making an intelligent statement about modern social mores especially as they pertain to looking for love. We’ve become an alarmist, hyper-alert society thanks to all the horror stories on social media about nightmare dates with people who turn out to be psychos. What’s meant as a romantic gesture turns into a thing, especially when feminist Emily forms a lynch mob (comprised of other Emilys) to cancel Email Guy. True, Owen illegally accessed their email accounts (with Emily R’s Help). He could get in a lot of trouble for it. And what if the Emily gave him a wrong number on purpose? It wouldn’t be the first time a girl did this to get rid of a hopeful suitor. The thing is he doesn’t know. He wants to track her down so he can find out if their brief connection was real. One can see how Owen’s actions might be misinterpreted. But he’s for real and he’s harmless.
Now that you’re read the previous paragraph, FORGET IT! It’s hogwash. Sure, Finding Emily touches on relevant themes, but that’s not why people buy tickets to a movie billed as a rom-com. They want to see a couple of likable people find love with each other after a few complications and misunderstandings. The key word is “likable”. Do we like Owen and Emily R.? YES! Owen, a talented musician afraid to have a go at it, is relatable. He’s a guy in his 20s, alone and awkward, who believes in love. He’s a genuinely nice guy. He just wants to find his person. Fearn is absolutely believable in the role. Even better, he has strong chemistry with his co-star Rice who’s equally good as Emily R., an intelligent woman looking to dispel the world’s romantic notions of love. She plays Emily as pragmatic rather than angry which I think is the right way to go.
I don’t know if Finding Emily will go down in cinematic history as an enduring rom-com classic. In fact, I highly doubt it. It’s good for what it is though. It’s funny, romantic and predictable in the right way. It’s cinematic comfort food. There’s nothing wrong with that.
