A young couple’s attempt to rekindle their faltering relationship is thwarted by a psychotic, axe-wielding maniac in the ridiculous horror film “Getaway”. But in all fairness to the axe-wielding maniac, this couple was doomed from the start. Dave (Darren Capozzi) is spineless and way too clingy for his girlfriend Beth (Leyna Juliet Weber). She, in turn, is cheating on him. Clearly at Dave’s urging, the two gamble on a last-ditch getaway to a secluded log cabin, where they will presumably work out their problems. Dave’s agenda is clear: get Beth naked, get laid, soothe things over, find out if she was cheating on him, and then maybe kill her if things don’t go as planned. Beth, meanwhile, has her own agenda for the weekend: no sex, separate bedrooms, talk about Dave’s future, see if there’s anything left of their relationship, etc. This already volatile situation turns deadly when Dave hears reports of an escaped mental patient in the area. Feeling the tide swaying against him on the homefront, Dave decides to just let the psycho do his dirty work for him. He sends poor Beth out to the car for something and then locks the door. Well, of course, this being the RIDICULOUS horror film that it is, a screaming madman immediately comes running out from the woods straight for her. She barely survives that encounter, only to face the real nightmare: their crumbling relationship! Insults fly and tempers flare, while outside the madman stalks, axe in tow. Surely, this guy must be nuts if he wants in on this. (Yet on one hand, we almost wish he’d have his way with them, but that’s another movie…)
Tongue-firmly-in-cheek or not (?), writer/director Dutch Doscher shamelessly employs almost every scary movie cliché in the book: ominous foreshadowing, overly dramatic scoring, cheap scares, over-the-top performances, etc. Yet for all that, or maybe because of all that, “Getaway” offers very little in the form of real suspense. A boatload of schlock maybe, but very little suspense. Particularly absurd is the notion that Dave might have been contemplating killing Beth if they couldn’t patch things up. Come on, this feeble twit is capable of that? Too much! That said, the film does have its campy charms as slapstick comedy, (though it sorely lacks the manic energy of, say, an “Evil Dead II” or a “Dead Alive”). Forget all the nonsense with the escaped psychotic killer, that’s just a stale plot device, the real guilty fun here is the rapidly deteriorating relationship of the two leads. It’s clear from the start that Beth and Dave have zero chemistry between them anymore, if they ever had any. Beth seems much more interested in breaking up than reconciling, while Dave does little to help his cause. Eventually, their union is brought to a hilariously caustic end with a truly memorable exclamation from Beth, too great in fact to reprint here. As satires of dating woes in the 21st century go, “Getaway” is dead on (albeit somewhat deranged).
