Do you ever go to a cabin in the woods and watch Evil Dead? Or maybe throw on Friday the 13th on a camping trip? That extra bit of immersion into the setting of a scary movie can really amp up the fright. If there is enough fright there to begin with, that is.
I usually reserve my last slot in the marathon for a known commodity that is guaranteed to be a home run, but this year I went with something different. I am on an anniversary trip in Hawaii with my wife and another couple, and found myself needing to fit in one more movie to fill my quota. After some discussion, we decided to research horror films set in Hawaii, and surprisingly found only a few options. A Perfect Getaway was very promising, however, with a plot synopsis that highlights two couples vacationing in the Aloha State while a killer is on the loose, and a cast list that includes wife-pleasing actors Timothy Olyphant and (pre-Marvel) Chris Hemsworth. Maybe the familiar scenario would give the movie some extra juice.
A Perfect Getaway falls into the horror-lite genre of thrillers featuring a mystery stalker. Once all the players have been introduced in the first act, you know that the bad guy has already made their appearance, its just a matter of working out who the most likely suspect will be. In this movie, you have slightly nebbish screen writer Steve Zahn and his beautiful wife, Mila Jivovich, a kind and capable former soldier (Olyphant) and his beautiful girlfriend, and a jacked-up hothead, named Kale of all things, (Hemsworth) and his beautiful girlfriend. As the three couples bounce off of each other throughout their respective vacations, they become aware that there have been a pair of murders on the island, and the victims were a vacationing couple. What’s more, the murderers are suspected to be a couple, as well. As expected, suspicions abound and eventually solidify into accusations and ultimately violence. But hey, on the bright side, its an awfully pretty place to die.
The four of us had the killers pegged pretty early on. That’s ok, though, because part of the fun of a movie like this is solving the mystery, and it was really the most satisfying direction for the story to take. Once the plot officially caught up to us, it was all about watching gorgeous people chase each other across a gorgeous backdrop. I don’t think Phantasm has to worry about being bumped from the 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time, but I enjoyed the watch all the same. I do wish there was enough horror to give even the most squeamish of us a reason to check the locks an extra time before bed, but that just wasn’t in the cards (we introduced our travel companions to a pair of modern Jordan Peele classics later in the week which fared much better in that department). I think if you want to have something on that isn’t too scary or too demanding of your attention, but has solid acting and a lot of nice things to look at, then you can do a lot worse than this film.
So that wraps up the season for me, although Scott will be back tomorrow to close us out with the 2023 entry into a beloved franchise that I quite enjoyed, and I look forward to reading his thoughts to see if we’re aligned. I know this was a bit of a short review to close out on, but as you can imagine, I have a lot to distract me this year. Let’s do it all again next October!
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