Getaway (Movie Review)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

PLOT: When a trio of gorgeous gals resorts to a little R&R in a lakeside backwater, they happen across a family of religious hillbilly kidnappers. When one of them is taken, the other two must find a way to rescue her.

REVIEW: After years of ostensibly studying his collaborators behind the camera, longtime actor turned first-time filmmaker Lane Toran has delivered a slick bit of misdirected sleight-of-hand with GETAWAY (formerly GETAWAY GIRLS), a small seventy-minute shoestring horror feature debut that, despite a dearth of legitimate scares, flashes glimpses of a budding filmmaker to be reckoned with given more time, money, and more fleshed-out screenplay. Co-written by and starring Toran and his wife, Jaclyn Bethan, at first blush the movie appears to be a thinly veiled self-indulgent vanity project, or a kinky fantasy role play of sorts, that hardly offers anything new to the horror genre whatsoever. It seems to only serve to stroke their egos. And while that tag might still be partially true, even if designed as a deliberate distraction in the early going, the movie functions far better when it reveals in the final act its true intention: duping the audience with a coyly duplicitous narrative frame. But even that, like the rest of the film, is executed with just the bare minimum of passably middling results.

A nerve-mangling opening shot of a person being dragged through the woods snatches our eye. After the credits, we find a truly stunning woman named Tamara (Betham) broken down roadside in her ‘69 Mustang. A pair of burly hicks named Merv (Toran) and Kib (Noah Lowdermilk) offer Tamara some gasoline to get her back on the road. Off she goes to meet her two bikini-clad besties, Brooke (Landry Allbright) and Maddy (Scout Taylor-Compton), who berate for her being late to the lakeside bacchanalia they enjoy. At night, the girls frequent the local watering hole, where Merv and Kib show up and, with the complicity of a barkeep named Bart (Ben Deschain), spike the girl’s complimentary cocktails. Tamara woozily collapses, only to wake up under a blue tarp in the back of a pickup. Appallingly, Merv and Kib’s Pa (Lane Caudell, Toran’s real-life father) oversees the kidnap, with Tamara just the latest in a skein of 16 girls they’ve abducted so far. In a maddening FRAILTY-like bit of brainwash, Pa has convinced the others (Kib most impressionably) that they must kidnap and impregnate the prettiest girls who pass through their backwater and kill them so they can make angel babies in heaven. Dumb, disturbing, and downright deranged!

As Tamara is strung up in a filthy barn with bleary eyes, her clothing continues to be torn off her ample physique, a trend that begins a series of semi-Sapphic-sex-scenes in the first 20 minutes of the movie. It seems as if Toran revels in fetishizing the spectacle of his wife make out with other hot girls onscreen, which happens several times in the early going. I really loathe to whinge about such, but the gratuity does not move the narrative forward in any meaningful way. Unless, and this is possible, that the salacious scenes are meant as a mere diversion from what Toran is ultimately up to, which is reframing the narrative in a tricksome manner come the final act. We won’t spoil the big reveal, except to say that the movie mostly serves as a filmmaking exercise to get to this very moment of mendacity. Otherwise, with its lack of genuine fright and skimpy runtime, the movie has little else to offer. As it is, Toran deserves credit for successfully steering the narrative veering.

In addition to Betham, who aside from one badly unconvincing scene with Kib gives a solid performance, credit also is in order for Lowdermilk. In his very first screen credit of any kind, he gives the best performance in the film. The scene in which he goes to Tamara to express his torn conscience over whether to obey his father or adhere to God is probably the best bit of acting in the entire film. Unfortunately, the aforementioned embarrassing scene with Tamara and Kib comes directly afterwards, which all but sullies the believable sentiment Lowdermilk submitted moments before. Elsewhere, genre-favorite Scout Taylor-Compton is always a pleasant presence, and while she’s underused here overall, she gives a credible turn as a sexy vamp with a wicked card up her sleeve. In terms of the technical, the film suffers the typical rash of low-budget inconsistencies, from insufficient lighting in spots to shoddy sound work in others. It’s important to note this is a small movie made with just a handful of actors (family members, half of them) and few resources that are usually afforded to much more expensive productions. And still, Toran makes the most of what he has to work with in GETAWAY and exhibits his filmmaking potential moving forward.