A Perfect Getaway

David Twohy’s Hawaiian-set thriller A Perfect Getaway presents an unusual critical quandary—I don’t want to give away the film’s big twist, but how else can I explain how bizarrely off the rails it goes in the succeeding 20 minutes? The movie fails, no doubt, but it fails in new and unique ways that have to be seen to be appreciated. And yet to recommend the film would be morally indefensible. A Perfect Getaway opens as a modest, self-aware thriller, piling on the red herrings in the story of a honeymooning couple (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich, one of many enormous leaps of faith we’re expected to make) crossing paths with unidentified serial killers on a remote island trail. Once the killers are revealed, writer-director Twohy indulges in an insanely prolonged sequence of hackneyed filmmaking the likes of which I’ve never seen.