2020-04-14
$0.0M
76 min
The thriller follows Tamara Miller as she plans a weekend lake getaway with her two best friends. When Tamara gets kidnapped by a backwoods cult, eerie and unexplained occurrences arise. Will she make it out alive or become the treasure of these deranged lunatics?
I loved the set-up for Getaway, that whole first act gave me serious Wolf Creek vibes, which, I don't know about how the horror community at large feels, but to me that's a compliment. Unfortunately, as soon as the actual story started happening, I feel like the wheels started falling off, and not long after that, the whole thing collapsed.
Also they definitely should have called this movie Girls' Trip. I know there's another movie with that name already, but there's already a movie called Getaway too, so...
Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.
Confused “woke” story about 3 killer hicks in North Carolina, Jaclyn Betham, and 2 girls kissing
In the heart of North Carolina a young woman (Jaclyn Betham) meets her two friends at a lake for a getaway (Scout Taylor-Compton & Landry Allbright), but she’s kidnapped by two hicks and taken to their pa’s backwoods homestead. Can she escape with her life? Can her two friends save her?
“Getaway” (2020) riffs on the cabin-in-the-woods plot with several good things going for it: The locations, cinematography, a few beautiful females, convincing misogynistic rednecks and good music, but it’s ruined by several problems.
The most egregious issue is that the script lacks necessary detail and needed a couple rewrites to flesh out the potential of the story and make for more convincing characters. As it is, we have three hicks in the sticks that mix Evangelical Christianity with a twisted penchant for serial killing and loads of unexplained mumbo jumbo about saving their “angels” by killing them.
As for the girls, without revealing anything, let’s just say the surprise isn’t believable in the least, particularly based on what we know about these characters through their previous actions (remember the hairdryer scene?). This is eye-rolling fantasy.
Lastly, the “woke” checklist is too obvious and annoying: Evil redneck quasi-Christians, lesbians, misogyny, girl power, etc. Note to the director/writer: Including several scenes of beautiful women kissing can’t make up for a script that sucks because you were too lazy and conscious of being politically (in)correct.
But statuesque Jaclyn Betham, who’s reminiscent of Megan Fox, is well utilized and almost makes the flick worth seeing… almost.
The film runs 1 hour, 16 minutes, and was shot in Randolph County, North Carolina.
GRADE: D+
