Cliff and Cydney are an adventurous young couple celebrating their honeymoon by backpacking to one of the most beautiful, and remote, beaches in Hawaii. Hiking the wild, secluded trails, they believe they've found paradise. But when the pair comes across a group of frightened hikers discussing the horrifying murder of another newlywed couple on the islands, they begin to question whether they should turn back. Unsure whether to stay or flee, Cliff and Cydney join up with two other couples, and things begin to go terrifyingly wrong. Far from civilization or rescue, everyone begins to look like a threat and nobody knows whom to trust. Paradise becomes hell on earth as a brutal battle for survival begins… --© Universal

A PERFECT GETAWAY is one of the more genuinely smarter thrillers I've seen in quite awhile. It has a clever script in the same vein as SCREAM written by David Twohy, who's also the director. You have characters that are self aware of things called "red herrings" and "twists," almost as if they are breaking the fourth wall, not to mention one of our characters is a screenwriter. And, to top it off, the film does not rely on cheap, gimmicky action sequences and CGI to keep things interesting. It's truly a first-rate thriller.

But I'm sad to say the film is not for everyone. To some, nothing really happens in the first two acts of the film. To me, I was so interested in the character development and the discussions the characters were having. The first two acts is all build up to an explosive third act where director Twohy pulls all the stops. If you're willing to sit and pay attention in the talky scenes, you'll be rewarded. Pay no attention at all, and you'll be missing a lot of crucial information that ties into a plot twist.

Speaking of twists, the surprise twist in here is, I'll admit, not that surprising. However, it's executed really well. And I'm sure some people will be put off by the twist because how it cheats. I'm here to say it doesn't. Like Roger Ebert said, it only seems to. The script is written in a way that the plot is tight and that there aren't any contradicting scenes that will bring the story down. It's as if Twohy found all the loose ends and fixed them up until there were no plot holes at all.

I enjoyed the performances a lot. Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich play characters in which I would love to hang out with. Zahn is as great as always in the geeky role. Jovovich also pulls off a convincing performance as the sympathetic, free-loving wife. Timothy Olyphant also does a terrific job making his character likable yet suspicious. Kiele Sanchez is great as his girlfriend. Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton play another couple, although I felt they were underused.

In the end, the film is a perfectly fine thriller that makes you guess and second guess yourself. The film truly benefits from Twohy's extremely clever script and great direction. I also liked the score by Boris Elkis and the beautiful cinematography. If you like thrillers, give this a watch. You won't regret stopping for this getaway. I'm sorry. I just had to do it.

Really enjoyed this...can't believe I'd not seen it before...what a find! Great acting, amazing scenery, nice throwing off scent...red snappers....great movie, highly recommend!

Ah, thrillers, the genre that can either hit or miss, because of it's wonderful "twist" endings. Now when I saw the trailer for A Perfect Getaway, I have to admit that I was intrigued, the advertisement said that it had a great twist ending, and for fun my boyfriend and I always like to go to these movies and try to see who can guess what the ending is, whoever guesses first and correctly will buy dinner, lol. So I happened to be right on this one, well, we both did, we pretty much figured out from the beginning, even though the director was trying to be "sly" about the whole thing, but never since The Perfect Stranger with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis, have I seen such a pathetic twist ending. This is one of those movies that is the "let's have a twist ending because we can" while I would have been perfectly happy if this was just an average thriller/horror movie. Instead we don't get the best from the actors and a very silly movie.

A young couple, Cliff and Cydney are celebrating their honeymoon by hiking to a remote beach in Hawaii. The couple comes across two hitchhikers, Cleo and Kale, and a group of frightened hikers discussing a double murder in Honolulu of another newlywed couple on the island, with the victims having their teeth pulled out, and they begin to question whether they should turn back. Unsure whether to stay or flee, Cliff and Cydney join up with another couple, Nick, who claims to have a titanium plate in his head and be a former special forces operative, and his longtime girlfriend, Gina, a former butcher. Far from civilization or rescue, everyone begins to look like a threat and nobody knows whom to trust. They later see Cleo and Kale getting arrested under the suspicion of murder. Gina and Cydney reveal that each thought that the others were the killers, and the group continues to the beach. Even though everything seems to be in the clear, things are not always as they seem.

A Perfect Getaway is seriously a ridicules movie that made no sense whatsoever, even with the ending being that Cliff and Cydney are the killers, why the heck in the beginning when we, the audience, are trying to figure out who the killers are, we get friggin' obvious Bonnie and Clyde type of girl and guy who are not too subtle on the "we are the killers" look. So it's like pointing out the typical creepy janitor in horror movies, you know that they're not the killers and then you have Cliff and Cydney who are talking about the other couple being the killers and it makes no sense. In fact neither does this paragraph, this movie has me so confused, lol. But point being, A Perfect Getaway was a waste of time and money. I strongly recommend you stay away form it, it was pretty lame.

2/10