Movie Review: Finding Emily (2026) finds a heart
directed by Alicia MacDonald, written by Rachel Hirons, starring Spike Fearn, Angourie Rice, and Cora Kirk
I went to the theater and paid good money to watch people fall in love and, dammit, that's what I got. Finding Emily is a generic title for a right down the middle romcom in the style of She's All That if it was mixed with Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist with a strange dash of PCU. Charming, funny, and overall a fun watch.
Meet Owen. He's a sound engineer at a Manchester university. He's trying to keep the club bumping at a respectable noise level when he meets Emily, a girl dressed as a fairy. But when she puts her number in his phone she leaves out one digit.
Does Owen decide the night was enough and go forward with his life? Hell no. He's still grieving his mother's passing while living with his brother Matt and Matt's wife Freya. The two of them enjoy sex in the living room, so of course he wants to connect with anyone who shows him attention. His purpose is now to find Emily.
Enter Emily. Another one. But this time she's a psych student trying to prove that love makes you do crazy shit like tattoo a proclamation of love on your finger. Emily says she's gonna help Owen find the first Emily, but she ends up doing some possible felonies and light gaslighting. That's okay cause she's American and the study she's doing will keep her visa active and Americans will do anything to keep from being deported.
The real fun kicks off when Owen emails every Emily at the university on the same message. This leads to three hundred women all around town either hating him for invading their inbox privacy like a Target back to school or loving his grand romantic gesture like when Target sends coupons to aplogize for promoting blackface. Director Alicia MacDonald sets this up in a great scene with Owen walking through his apartment surrounded by the ghosts of these women reading out their replies to his email like a haunting at a Starbucks.
It's all romcom tropes from then on out as Emily hides both her previous love (a douche name Tristan), her growing love for Owen (he asks for wardrobe advice and Rice says "your green checked shirt" in the most unrequited way), and her duplicitous actions to continue her study (she has a murder board and gives him physical props at one point). Owen floats about attempting to find this one girl and when anyone asks he gives a grand speech about the power of love and persistance. Spike Fearn gives Owen just enough agency to feel real and does a great job at feeling like a twenty-something failed musician trying to rise again. At Owen's lowest moment, Fearn gives his best performance, speaking the heart of his issues around his mom's death, saying "I promised her I'd be okay" through his tears and mine. There' s a sweetness to this movie that pushes against the realistic indie film cinematography. It looks like it wants gritty realistic black coffee while serving light strawberry shortcake.
Check it out.