Overview
A family's vacation to a remote getaway takes an unexpected turn when they discover the island they're on is inhabited by a serial killer.
Directed by Steffan Haars and written and starring Nick Frost, Get Away is a dark comedy horror about a family who holiday on a remote island in Sweden, with their vacation coinciding with a peculiar holiday tradition the locals celebrate which has very dark origins. With touches of Midsommar fused with Wicker Man, only with a twistedly comical slant, this sounds on paper like a promising fun outing.
Unfortunately, as anyone who has read Nick Frost’s autobiography will know, Frost isn’t a great writer. Previous projects he has been involved with the screenplay for have always had the benefit of someone else working with him – for example the film Paul which clearly represents Simon Pegg’s voice more than Frost. What we get here is a relatively short film that is burdened with drawn out and unengaging first two acts that goes gonzo bonkers in the final act, but took so long to get there that it does little to recover. It probably doesn’t help that the twist that leads to the blood-spatter final act is so laboriously signposted early on that it fails to be as clever as it clearly thinks it is.
Don’t get me wrong, Frost is clearly having fun here, and there are moments of wonderful humour and charm from him, especially as part of the family dynamic alongside Aisling Bea as the heads of the family. Sadly Sebastian Croft and Maisie Ayres as their children are weakly written and given little to actually care about, and the less said about Ereo Milonoff as Mats the better – his character is simply an irritation.
This is a film that sits comfortably with the words Sky Original tagged to it, and represents pretty much the quality that we’ve come to expect from such. Immediately forgettable, but thankfully short.