A weekend getaway trip to Croatia ends up becoming a murder mystery in the newest Netflix movie, The Weekend Away.
Sarah Alderson adapts the script from her book of the same name. Anyone already familiar with the book is at an advantage. More power to you if this is the case. The rest of us are coming in cold. Or after watching the trailer. You do you. If your like me, the casting of Leighton Meester is what will draw your interest in watching the movie. Suffice it to say, I came out feeling rather disappointing.
The gist of the film is that Beth (Leighton Meester) gets accused of killing her recently divorced best friend, Kate (Christina Wolfe). Naturally, Beth does her own investigation to uncover the truth. Of course, she uncovers things that I’m sure she wished she had known earlier.
Some changes right off the bat: Orla is now Beth. She’s still a mother and married to Rob (Luke Norris). Another major change is that the book’s setting is in Lisbon where the film moves its setting to Croatia. I’m assuming that this change is because of the pandemic but I could be wrong. I can only wonder why are there changes to the names or location? Is it because of Meester’s casting? Is she more of a Beth than an Orla? The book is also described as “a twisty holiday read for fans of The Holiday and Date Night.”
Netflix is pumping out at least one major film a week. Some of them are actually good. Others are no different than the straight-to-video films that always by pass the theaters. The sad part is that we never really know which films are going to be good. I saw Leighton Meester’s name and thought, okay, I’ll check this film out. If I’m being honest, my focus is extremely terrible of late so I ended up watching the film twice. While my focus was better on the second viewing, the film itself is not. The Weekend Away is a super generic murder mystery thriller that feels like it would be perfect airing on Lifetime. A character like Zain (Ziad Bakri) feels like he’s only in the film to be a cliché of a character that only feels the diversity checkbox. Another film would probably treat his character differently.
Thrillers need to have us on the edge of our seats. The Weekend Away is unable to do even that. I mean, the twists and turns more or less become so predictable. The funny part is that people are going to see the film is new on Netflix this weekend and give it a watch. This is how bad films like Love Hard enter the Netflix Top Ten. Do yourself a favor and just watch something else instead. There are good murder mysteries out there but this is not one of them.
DIRECTOR: Kim Farrant
SCREENWRITER: Sarah Alderson
CAST: Leighton Meester, Christina Wolfe, Ziad Bakri, Luke Norris
Netflix will launch The Weekend Away on March 3, 2022. Grade: 2/5
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