A PERFECT GETAWAY Review

A slow but gripping thriller. A PERFECT GETAWAY spends most of its time building up the characters, making you think one thing before it smashes it into pieces in the last 15-20 minutes of the movie. It can get… excruciatingly boring, even the flashbacks to explain everything is way too lengthy, but how it all concludes, eventually I might add, is mildly enjoyable. It’s not the perfect thriller but it is a tricky one.

Cliff and Cydney (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich) are an adventurous young couple celebrating their honeymoon by backpacking to one of the most beautiful, and remote, beaches in Hawaii. Hiking the wild, secluded trails, they believe they’ve found paradise. But when the pair comes across a group of frightened hikers discussing the horrifying murder of another newlywed couple on the islands, they begin to question whether they should turn back.
Unsure whether to stay or flee, Cliff and Cydney join up with two other couples, and things begin to go terrifyingly wrong. Far from civilization or rescue, everyone begins to look like a threat and nobody knows whom to trust. Paradise becomes hell on earth as a brutal battle for survival begins…

It’s a bit difficult to write a review of movies with twists and not spoil too much, kinda like how you’d try to tell your peers and get them excited about seeing The Sixth Sense 10 years ago without revealing what happens to Bruce Willis, but there’s just this desire in your gut that just aches to brag about what you know.
If you followed the story closely you might be able to pick up clues here and there but writer/director David Twohy does a good job of covering that up with dialogue that doesn’t keep you guessing because the characters are made in such a way that it seems so obvious to tell which ones that are bad and which ones are good,.. or so you think.

I kid you not, this movie is so slow, halfway through the end, you’ll start to wonder if you should’ve watched another movie instead. It drags and drags and drags, with one or two moments that may or may not have the potential to escalate into something but then they die down and there goes another walking the trails again. But once again, as soon as the twist takes place in the middle, everything picks up and the rest is intense, intense, intense.

Somebody in this movie reminds me of Edward Norton in Primal Fear and Kevin Spacey in Usual Suspect that had everyone fooled. Steve Zahn and Timothy Foe deliver each other worthy foes. But Zahn and Jovovish’s chemistry seems to be forced a bit, and I think the island could play a bigger role in making the chase more difficult, and I’m not only saying that because I’m a fan of the series Lost. The flashbacks does too much in explaining things and doesn’t leave room for the audiences to figure things out for themselves.

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