In an always-on world, there’s something beautiful about traveling somewhere without easy access to tech. It helps one recenter and, if with others, reconnect. Traveling is, of course, a privilege and should be treated as deferential to the place one goes and, yet, so often, those who go tend to seek accommodations from hosts and not the other way around. This element has been utilized in stories that send chills down one’s spine, like with recent films Midsommar (2019) or Old (2022), in which tourists are treated as lambs to a sacrificial slaughter. Approaching a similar narrative with a dark humor twist is the Nick Frost-starring and -written, Steffen Haars-directed Get Away, coming to theaters December 2024 and to Shudder in 2025. Pulling humor from the discord of tourist privilege and seeming colonialistic superiority over local custom, Get Away offers a different kind of slasher that leans into the absurdity, taking audiences willing to go with it on a bloody ride.
L-R: Nick Frost as Richard and Aisling Bea as Susan in Steffen Haars’ GET AWAY. Courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
In desperate need of a vacation, parents Richard and Susan (Nick Frost and Aisling Bea, respectively) pack up their two kids, Sam and Jessie (Sebastian Croft and Maisie Ayres, respectively), and head for the remote Swedish island of Svälta where they’ve booked an AirBnB. The timing, however, couldn’t be worse as the small commune, which already detests outsiders due to a 200-year-old grudge, is preparing for their annual Karantän remembrance celebration. These tourists seem to be able to handle the coldness of the locals and the weirdness of their host, Matts (Eero Milonoff), but bodies starting to drop, well, that changes everything.
L-R: Sebastian Croft as Sam, Maisie Ayres as Jessie, Nick Frost as Richard, and Aisling Bea as Susan in Steffen Haars’ GET AWAY. Courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
Get Away is a reteaming for Frost and Haars, who also worked on the 2024 horror comedy Krazy House. Frost only starred in and produced that project, while he stars in and wrote the script here. As such, one should expect a specific brand of British humor that’s dry, often ironic, and frequently uncouth. Sometimes it’s in the form of a seeming lack of awareness of the danger the family is in as they repeatedly, nonchalantly ignore shouts of warning from the film’s harbinger, a restaurant owner they met before hopping the ferry to the island. A favorite moment is how island monarch Klara (Anitta Suikkari) blusters at the notion that the celebration is a play, evoking the contention of tourist disinterest/conviction of ignorance toward indigenous customs. Everywhere this family goes, they run against the locals the wrong way. Is that reason enough to kill them? Well, it depends on which side of the ideological divide you end up on.
This is what makes Frost’s film particularly fascinating as the weight of it positions Richard and his family as the poor-timing visitors who see themselves as deserving despite all signs pointing to them being interlopers. From the perspective of another 2024 slasher, In A Violent Nature, because some thoughtless college kids decided to disturb a resting site that included a necklace dear to the buried, they awake Johnny (Ry Barrett) who stalked and murdered as many as he could find until he reclaimed the necklace. Whether or not those kids deserved to die is up for debate, but it all begins with one person being so selfish as to think they had the right to take a bauble from a grave. In this vein, much of the humor in Get Away comes from the obliviousness and insular actions of these four travelers who grow frustrated at the repeated slights hurled at them, instead of acknowledging that they could potentially be in the wrong by coming to the island known for its isolationist views, by not listening to the locals when they provide repeated cautions, and, ultimately disrespecting the celebration with various condescending descriptors or phrases. The script is most interesting when the subtext becomes text ahead of the bloodletting.
L-R: Maisie Ayres as Jessie and Eero Milonoff as Matts in Steffen Haars’ GET AWAY. Courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
Where the film falters is in the questions it raises without satisfactory answers. Susan proclaims to the locals a connection to the island (beautifully delivered by Bea with the perfect tone of disregard for local perspective) and it’s never addressed again; the relationship between the children includes all the usual grab-ass and verbal jousting, but there’s an undertone that implies a certain seriousness that makes one frustrated at the implication. Even as the film hits its third act climax and the blood is flowing, dialogue implies something clandestine and far-reaching while actions imply merely lunacy. There’s nothing wrong with a simple wrong-place, wrong-time slasher or a complex Machiavellian design akin to The Cabin in the Woods (2011), but the absence of clarity makes what we see less exciting and fun (for a comedic slasher) and more frustrating at what’s unclear and what it all means.
L-R: Sebastian Croft as Sam and Maisie Ayres as Jessie in Steffen Haars’ GET AWAY. Courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
Audiences looking for vast amounts of blood flow, cheeky dark comedy, and a different look at how to protect the greater good (“the greater good”) will likely embrace what Get Away offers. The cinematography understands what kind of thriller it is, adapting and shifting depending on whether it’s meant to convey the absurd or the threatening (sometimes both at once); the performances are dialed in on tone and intent; and the script provides enough details that, when the killing starts, one is primed and ready for what follows. If nothing else, it’s fine entertainment between the massive tentpoles slamming into theaters, offering something different enough from the mainstream to entice. But whether or not you want to get away, too, will really depend on how receptive you are to the notions of colonialism and the systemic nature of these ideals that continue to plague society and propagate the idea that locals = bad and visitors = good (or vice versa).
In theaters December 6th, 2024.
Available on Shudder 2025.
For more information, head to the official XYZ Films Get Away webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews, streaming
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