The Weekend Away
A holiday break turns into a nightmare in the latest thriller from Netflix.
When a plot calls for a reserved young woman to leave her husband babysitting their infant at home and go on a weekend break abroad to meet a crazy outgoing girlfriend, you immediately know that there's trouble in store and that something has just got to give. Here we have young mum Beth (Leighton Meester) joining old buddy Kate (Christina Wolfe) in an Airbnb in the gorgeous location of Split in Croatia. Kate has planned a whole weekend of fun for the couple with bouts of boozing and clubbing, more boozing and drug-taking and even more boozing and copping off with the local lads.
However, come the morning and there's no sign of Kate, so Beth gets involved with the search for her recalcitrant friend. She cannot remember much about the previous drug- and booze-fuelled night, but at each twisted turn of the plot she faces a brick wall of incomprehension and eventually the finger of suspicion starts to point in her direction, as the police believe that Beth is in some way involved with Kate's disappearance. She befriends a sympathetic taxi-driver, and is helped by the landlord of the B&B, but do they have other motives besides helping the distressed Beth? And when both Beth's husband and Kate's ex appear on the scene, the odds are definitely stacked against her.
If all of this sounds preposterous, well maybe it is, but we are not given much time to question anyone's motives as Sarah Alderson's adaptation of her own novel and Kim Farrant's direction keep the proceedings sprightly on the move as the action takes a prolonged leap of faith while careering towards the final twist in the plot. The film is also helped by the cinematography of Noah Greenberg which captures the beauty of the city of Split locations where a labyrinthine chase takes place in and around the ancient fourth-century Roman Palace of Diocletian.
The performances evince enough credibility that wouldn't be out of place in a Hitchcock thriller, with Leighton Meester as the fall-girl Beth keeping us on her side, while Christina Wolfe gets us to despair of the motives of Kate, in an overtly femme fatale performance. We may question Ziad Bakri as Zain the taxi driver as to why he is being so understanding with a woman he hardly knows, and why Amar Bukvic as the unscrupulous police officer is so hellbent on finding Beth guilty. Eventually all is revealed.
MICHAEL DARVELL
Cast: Leighton Meester, Christina Wolfe, Ziad Bakri, Luke Norris, Amar Bukvic, Iva Mihalic, Adrian Pezdirc, Lujo Kuncevic, Parth Thakerar.
Dir Kim Farrant, Pro Charlie Morrison, Ben Pugh and Erica Steinberg, Screenplay Sarah Alderson, based on her novel, Ph Noah Greenberg, Pro Des Katja Soltes, Ed Sophie Corra, Music Daniel Wohl, Costumes Camille Adomakoh.
42/Netflix-Netflix.
90 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 3 March 2022. Cert. 15.