HFC @ Fantastic Fest ‘24: Get Away

Vacations, especially ones involving family, can be a headache. Add on the little problem of being on an isolated Swedish island filled with serial killers and cultists, and baby, you’ve got a stress bomb going! Director Steffen Haars (co-creator of the Dutch show New Kids on the Block) and writer Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), come together to mine humor and gore in vacation-from-hell thriller Get Away, which had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2024.

Frost plays Richard, the bearded, goofy patriarch of his family. He and his wife Susan (Aisling Bea, This Way Up) are bringing their kids Jesse (Maisie Ayers in her feature debut) and Sam (Sebastian Croft, How to Date Billy Walsh) with them on a trip to the lonesome island of Svalta. While the parents are excited to see Svalta’s historic tradition — a play that retells the island’s violent history involving the island’s ancestors and English soldiers — Jesse and Sam play their dutiful roles as the kids who could care less. After a run-in with some cold and foreboding mainland Swedes, the family learns that the inhabitants of Svalta are equally inhospitable, save for maybe Eero Milonoff’s (Border) weird, but relatively accommodating bed & breakfast host. 

From the outset, Get Away perpetually winks at the audience. It knows that you know that the high-strung British family is bound to run into something deadly on an island filled with leering locals. Haars and Frost ,  who have another collaboration coming out this year with Krazy House ,  do their part by hitting the typical beats of “tourists in a strange land” narrative. There’s constant warnings to not go to Svalta, strange mutterings of the special play that will take place soon, and of course, the large and creaky bed & breakfast the family stays at. The comedy comes from the family’s obliviousness to all these foreboding signifiers of doom, though Frost’s script goes back to that well so much it starts to run dry by the second act. 

Haars, to his credit, places these familiar characters and situations into a slick looking film. Working with cinematographer Joris Kerbosch, they capture the beauty and menace of the island and its structures, which hew close to the triangular sharp hovels found in Midsommar. As the movie goes on, Kerbosch gets to flex some eye-catching moves like the always cool bit of slowly turning the camera upside down. Overall, there isn’t much originality in the visuals of Get Away, but it’s still easy on the eyes.

The characters are in the same boat, occupying broad archetypes seen in other horror-comedies: the bumbling dad, the annoyed kids, the old man who tells the tourists to leave, etc. Thankfully, most of the performers play up these tried-and-true beats. Frost, always an enjoyable performer, can play the lovable goof in his sleep. Bea, as his partner, plays well with him, showing off Susan’s brash approach — witness the crude sensuality she displays all casual-like as she asks Richard if he wants a blowjob after the kids leave. Ayers and Croft fare slightly less well, confined to siblings that share the same characterization: they’re constant complainers.

The Swedish characters  (who, along with the island the movie takes place on, are actually of Finnish origin due to budget constraints, as Haars and Frost revealed in the post-screening Q&A)  get the task of bringing to life the weird locals that unnerve the vacationing British family. However, they too understand the assignment with Anitta Suikkari (The Tundra Within Me) especially having a blast as the island’s menacing elder. Outside of Milonoff and Suikkari, though, the rest of the island people are left to deal with characters that show some promise of personality before being overrun by the film’s focus on the island’s visitors.

The enjoyable performances help buoy a story that takes a while to really get into gear. There’s mentions of the Svaltans still holding grudges against British misdeeds from hundreds of years ago, which adds the promise of interesting commentary, but the film never digs into how those past sins play into the present. The initial attempts to build tension and mystery about what the townsfolk have in mind for their guests also leaves something to be desired. Even on-screen text displaying a timer counting down the days to the mysterious performance loses tension due to a script that hardly focuses on what exactly the play is about. The bumps in the dark also feel undercooked . Expect the usual scenes of a character hearing something, looking to its source, and then seeing nothing — taking out the “horror” from the film’s “horror-comedy” label.

By the time the third act comes around, the above complaints come across as features more than bugs—almost as if the creators knowingly held back on tapping into their creative juices until the final act. Once the bodies hit the floor, Haars and Frost reveal the narrative ace up their sleeve, flipping the expectations of who’s hunting who. It’s a twist that lacks buildup or foreshadowing, but it still creates a fun-in-the-moment swerve. In its conclusion, Get Away becomes a slasher free-for-all with throats being slit, people set on fire, and heads getting popped like zits. The performers, once confined to seemingly boxed-in roles, each get some new, unhinged energy in taking on buried aspects of their characters.

It’s all a little chaotic, but a welcome pivot for a movie that initially sets itself up as a tame depiction of tourists becoming meat for strange locals. Still, Haars, even in these fun bits, struggles to get a grip on a movie going into manic overdrive. The director’s blocking and character placement plops characters wherever the film needs them to be, creating whiplash that doesn’t give the viewer a clear understanding of where anyone is. One moment a character is near a coastal lifeguard building and then in the next second they’re back with their group in the center of the island. Frost’s script also gets lost in the frantic final act, adding even more character turns and lore building that feel slapped on rather than naturally built up to.

Like any family vacation, Get Away has its ups and downs. The initial journey can be a tad boring, and the bevy of jokes everyone drops range from unfunny to chuckle worthy. And yet, the people on this vacation are enjoyable to be around. Even on some familiar genre roads, Haars’ film still manages to hold some fun surprises along the way.

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