‘Get Away’ Movie Review: Darkly Amusing Horror-Comedy Brings Cringe And Carnage
Photo from IFC Films
From Jeremy Kibler
After co-starring in Edgar Wright’s genre subversions like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End (as part Wright and Simon Pegg’s Cornetto Trilogy), Nick Frost now writes and stars in his own horror-comedy. With a cleverly dual title, Get Away plays out as a family comedy that melds into sinister folk horror while satirizing the privilege and ignorance that often come with tourism. It’s The Wicker Man or Midsommar, but with absurd laughs, more bloodshed, and no nudity.
Richard (Nick Frost) and Susan Smith (Aisling Bea) take their kids, vegetarian son Sam (Sebastian Croft) and moody daughter Jessie (Maisie Ayres), on holiday to the Swedish island of Svalta. They’ve arrived two days before Karantan, a prideful holiday commemorating a 200-year-old tragedy, and have to take a ferry to the B&B they’ve rented from an extremely weird but possibly harmless local (Eero Milonoff). Since her ancestors were from there, Susan wants to see the play (but don’t you dare call it a “play”) that’s put on every year. The townsfolk are less than welcoming and put on creepy, intimidating faces, particularly community matriarch Klara (Anitta Suikkari), but Richard and Smith take the pushback in stride. Oh, and it seems there’s a killer on the loose.
When the Smith family keeps having awkward interactions with the residents of Svalta, Get Away works well as a darkly amusing culture-clash comedy. It’s as if the Smiths come from a light comedy and the Swedish locals were lifted from a straight-faced horror movie, making the cringe humor land that much harder. Director Steffan Haars and writer Frost employ the interloper tropes we’ve seen before, but knowingly so without forgetting a genuine looming threat.
The script is sneakily constructed, but it’s the cast that does a lot of the heavy lifting. As the enthusiastic Richard and perky Susan Smith (who calls her husband “Daddy” ad naseum), Nick Frost and Aisling Bea are a comedic match made in heaven. As daughter Jessie, newcomer Maisie Ayres’s deadpan delivery is quite inspired on a number of occasions.
The armchair gladiators in the audience will immediately poke a hole in Get Away. Why doesn’t the family just get out (or get away)? Well, smartass, there is a reason — all we’ll say is that the Smiths are on holiday, dammit, so they couldn’t possibly leave and miss out. An hour into the film, there is a deceitful turn that recontextualizes what came before. The shift itself isn’t as subversive as it thinks it is, but those final thirty minutes pave the way for some savagely bloody, cheerfully demented carnage.
Get Away ends up being more of a good time than a game-changing genre great. No matter, it still asserts itself by holding its card close to its vest before stabbing you in the head.
Rating: 3/5
Get Away hits select theaters on December 6, 2024.
