Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Netflix: Review of THE WEEKEND AWAY: Crime in Captivating Croatia

 March 8, 2022



Beth (Leighton Meester) arrived in Croatia for a weekend break with her good friend Kate (Christina Wolf). Kate brought Beth to a nightclub where they hung out and had drinks with a couple of guys. The next day, Beth woke up totally disoriented and realized that Kate had gone missing. Beth called the taxi driver Zain (Ziad Bakri), who picked her up from the airport the day before, to help her look for her friend. 

Beth and Kate were poles apart in personality even if they were best of friends. Beth was more of the quiet reserved type, while Kate was the party girl who longed for attention. Beth was just a new mother to a baby girl. However, she and her husband Rob (Luke Norris) were having a rough patch in their marriage, so she decided to accept this invitation from Kate who had just gone through a divorce from her husband Jay (Parth Thakerar). 

The beginning part where the mystery of Kate's disappearance was being set up was quite formulaic. However, from there on, the story will go from one twist to another and various other people becoming involved and being suspects, including Beth herself. Everyone, including the friendly Zain or the police detective Pavic (Amar Bukvić), will be acting very suspiciously, so even you will not know who to trust, and that was fun.

Australian film director Kim Farrant was able to build up a lot of  taut suspense and purposeful confusion from the screenplay of Sarah Alderson that managed to mix marital melodrama with Syrian refugees and Airbnb creeps. There were probably a number of questionable points, but with Farrant's brisk yet engaging pace of cinematic storytelling, there was really no time to think of plot holes as you just get shuttled from one plausible solution to another. 

The absolute best part about this film were the picturesque locations in Croatia.  Mainly shot in the city of Split (you can see the Diocletian's Palace and the statue of Gregory of Nin), there were also scenes shot in Dubrovnik ("Game of Thrones" will definitely be brought back to King's Landing) and Zagreb (the capital of Croatia). Even if the story does not exactly show a tourist-friendly side to Croatia, you will want to go visit. 6/10. 



No comments:

Post a Comment