The Weekend Away (2022) Review!!

Synopsis – A weekend getaway to Croatia that goes awry when a woman is accused of killing her best friend. As she attempts to clear her name and uncover the truth, her efforts unearth a painful secret.

My Take – Yet another week, yet another thriller adaption hoping to reel in the massive affluence earned by the star studded adaptions of Gone Girl (2014) and The Girl on the Train (2016) has arrived. For years, we’ve have been seeing new books and their adaptions trying to replicate the success of those thrillers to mixed ends.

The latest to join this list is the adaption of 2020 best seller by Sarah Alderson, who also wrote the screenplay, is directed by Kim Farrant (2015’s Nicole Kidman led Strangerland), and sets a good old fashioned murder mystery against a beautiful backdrop.

While Netflix released thrillers aren’t exactly of high quality, and sure, this one too is not formidably original, often feeling like a winding rehash of every psychological thriller of the last decade, yet it is decent enough average effort with all the right ingredients and plenty of twists in its tale to keep fans of the genre engaged for 89 minutes.

But most importantly, it has Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester leading the vacation thriller. Fans of her work might find something here especially considering how it has been a while since Meester has graced our screens with anything significant.

The story follows Beth (Leighton Meester), a young new mother, who gets convinced to go on a weekend trip to Croatia with her recently divorced glamorous best friend Kate (Christina Wolfe), while her husband Rob (Luke Norris) stayed back in London to take care of their new born baby.

Upon arrival though the new mom is a little less than thrilled to be squeezing into evening wear, dreading the idea of wearing a swimsuit, but she’s happy to be with her old friend. The two head out for an evening on the town, and Kate probes Beth about the state of her marriage, a relationship that seems to have gone stale in the last year. The friends bond and chat and Beth seems ready to call it a night after dinner, but Kate convinces her to continue their exploits and relive their glory days.

Which effectively enters wild territory when the two meet some handsome guys at the next bar, and exchange more than a few drinks, only to wake up the next morning to find Kate missing.

Finding herself to be accused of her murder, Beth begins to wonder if her fuzzy memories of the evening are concealing something much more sinister than she ever imagined. Taking the help of Zain (Ziad Bakri), a friendly immigrant cab driver, Beth begins retracing her steps, with a determination to discover the truth about what happened to her best friend.

The film doesn’t waste much time in getting to Kate’s disappearance as by the 15-minute mark, she’s gone and Beth is left worried. Of course, Beth gradually pieces together some details of the night before, which she can’t recall, much to her frustration, but the first steps forward in her investigation only come about because she has Zain to help her.

For the first portion of the film, Beth is more of a passive bystander. It’s only later on in the action that she brings out some clever moves of her own, including one that’s a sly callback to an early moment.

Considering the relatively short amount of time and a the coverage of the story director Kim Farrant does a fine job, as she keeps the proceedings sleek and promising, with a taut first third that quickly illustrates the women’s strained thirty-something friendship and sets up a decently plausible mystery.

The script from British-American writer Sarah Alderson, who also wrote the novel of the same name, proceeds apace from there with a steady five-minute rhythm of plot twists at first intriguing, then wearying, then either ludicrous or obvious.

Yet it is all juicy and watchable, the kind of trashy, occasionally nonsensical murder mystery set at a dreamy location that 90-minute Netflix dreams are made of. There are a lot of sins a thriller like this can commit, especially predictability being one of them, but the film is never boring, even if you’ve guessed out who the killer is in the first act.

On a more positive note, the setting for the film is beautiful. Croatia is filmed in all its resplendent glory. A tense, claustrophobic, atmosphere is created in the street chases through the narrow alleys, up steps and into dead ends so familiar with European coastal towns. Director Kim Farrant uses a number of long shots of the town’s frontage to highlight its beauty and tranquility.

Leighton Meester delivers a solid performance and convincingly looks the part of a woman who has not taken a night to herself in a long while. Here, Meester grounds a thinly written character who could’ve been merely a plot device in an ordinary thriller. Even when most of the twists come obvious, she is able to register some emotional shock.

Ziad Bakri is charming as the Syrian cab driver who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Beth upon her arrival to Croatia. It’s easy for this kind of local sidekick role to be thankless, but Bakri has a natural charisma, acting as a grounding force opposite Beth’s more panicked energy.

Luke Norris provides adequate support, while Christina Wolfe and Amar Bukvić are effective in their limited screen time. On the whole, ‘The Weekend Away’ is a predictable yet enjoyable thriller serving a strong performance from Leighton Meester.