UK, 2024
Review:
JA Kerswell
Part comedy about awkward social manners and part berserker slasher, GET AWAY often succeeds at both but perhaps doesn’t quite stick the landing. A British family with their Irish mother visit a remote Swedish island to observe the inhabitants' anniversary folk production about a massacre that happened 200 years ago. How well it works may depend on your reaction to the subtleties of British comedy and a major twist halfway through.
Susan (Aisling Bea) has booked an AirBnB on Svalta island with her husband Richard (Nick Frost) and their two teenage children—Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres). They ignore the dire warnings of locals on the mainland and take the ferry to Svalta. On arrival, they are met with incredulity and hostility by the locals—with head islander Klara (Anitta Suikkari) telling them to leave at once. Susan tells them that they have booked somewhere to stay and they are there to watch the island’s 200th-anniversary celebrations of the massacre that nearly wiped out the whole population and drove the survivors into cannibalism.
Susan cheerily explains that the reason they are visiting is that one of her ancestors was part of a British soldier contingent who took part in the massacre—which, understandably, goes down like a lead balloon. However, before they are lynched, another islander, Matts (a fantastically pervy performance from Eero Milonoff), announces that he is the one who has rented his late mother’s house to the family and whisks them away.
They are further spooked when islanders turn up at night in animal and folk masks with torches at their rental and deposit a dead animal on their steps. Jessie is also unnerved when she hears noises coming from behind a mirror in the bathroom and tells her father she thinks they are being watched. Klara tries to convince the other islanders that they should kill the outsiders and resurrect a bloody tradition that has been dormant for 30 years. With the festival only hours away, who will survive until morning?
Nick Frost is obviously best known for his horror comedies with fellow Brit Simon Pegg—such as SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004) and THE WORLD’S END (2013). Frost also wrote this, and it features many of his trademark touches. I thought it was pretty funny, but your mileage may vary depending on how you are attuned to the nuances of British comedy—with much of the humour coming from social embarrassment and awkwardness. This fish-out-of-water approach works as it juxtaposes the seemingly normal British family against the shaggy, wide-eyed Swedes in full folk horror mode. The film plays on exaggerations on both sides but cleverly shifts sympathies throughout.
[Spoilers - skip this paragraph if you haven’t seen the film or don’t want its twist revealed] The film’s big reveal is that the ‘family’ are a group of serial killers that are visiting the island to recreate the British-led massacre of the islanders 200 years previously—with one of them saying: “We are the monsters, babes.”
GET AWAY really does get into berserker mode in its last half hour, when Richard and co stab, slash and decapitate locals at a breathless pace. It is certainly gory, but the film doesn’t lose its sense of irony or humour—with Richard and Susan continuing their Britishisms throughout the mayhem. Of course, this volte-face of where audience sympathies may lie might not sit right with everyone, but it’s an effective twist, and the film certainly lays its clues down beforehand. [end spoilers]
Ironically, despite GET AWAY being set in Sweden—seemingly the default location of late for Euro folk horror—it was actually filmed in Finland with a largely Finnish cast. While the subtleties of this may be lost on non-Scandinavian audiences, I wonder what Swedish audiences think of the way they have been portrayed by an English writer and a Dutch director. I mean, are “fermented mackerel anus” burgers really a thing in Sweden? I’ll pass.
Ultimately, GET AWAY is a general recommendation with caveats about how well the humour will travel. There aren’t any great lofty ideas at play here, but the film’s second half is rip-roaring slasher mania that should delight the gorehounds.
BODY COUNT 21:
Female 5 / Male 16