From Robert Scucci
| Published
For me, watching psychological horror films is always a godsend, as genre conventions often limit the telling of the story in painfully obvious ways. After watching hundreds of films that prominently feature an unreliable protagonist with a troubled past that leads to questionable behavior in the present, I keep coming back in search of films like The girl who got away. Even though this film makes you question what is real and what the main characters are imagining, it becomes clear that sometimes you have to take things at face value, despite the buildup that leads you to believe otherwise.
That means, The girl who got away builds its premise and makes you question the chain of events, but only before everything comes full circle again with a third-act reckoning that doesn’t feel like a total cop-out.
The girl who got away
The girl who got away puts all cards on the table in the opening sequence, set in 1998, as a man and his boy drive down a dark country road. When the father sees a bloodied woman brandishing a knife, he stops to see how he could help and tells his son to keep the door locked. When a little girl knocks on the car window, the boy lets her in and learns that she is a missing girl named Christina Bowden (portrayed in this sequence by Victoria Semenenko), who has escaped from the captivity of serial killer Elizabeth Caulfield (Kaye Tuckerman). fled.
Today Christina (Lexi Johnson) is an adult and works as an elementary school teacher. Realizing that she would have had no chance of reaching adulthood if someone hadn’t taken her in after she ran away, Christina adopts Lisa Spencer (Willow McCarthy), a troubled teenager who reminds her of herself, to be with her to make peace with her own violent past. While Christina is trying her best to live a normal life, her world is rocked when Officer Jamie Nwosou (Chukwudi Iwuji) tracks her down to inform her that Elizabeth Caulfield has escaped from prison and seems determined to put an end to it bring what she started many years ago.
The Safe House and the Body Count
The titular girl who escaped is hiding under Jamie’s watch, but wants to keep up appearances so no one will worry about her well-being. Constantly looking over her shoulder, Christina rightfully becomes paranoid as her past comes back to haunt her, but not without experiencing blackout episodes where she wakes up with blood and dirt on her hands, which leads to one on her more than once Innocence doubts. Although there was never any doubt in my mind about Christina’s innocence, it’s hard to ignore the fact that death seems to follow her wherever she goes, as if she’s hiding some deep, dark, buried secret that isn’t her would like to be dug up.
A surprising turn of events
The above mentioned overview of The girl who got away It sounds like the rest of the running time will lead to something as contrived as Christina being the murderer the whole time and blaming Elizabeth for the crimes she actually committed herself as a child. Without giving you away the plot, I can assure you that you will experience a surprise ending that goes far beyond what you would averagely expect psychological horror Film.
Is Christina so troubled that she is an unreliable witness in several cases? Absolutely.
But is she intentionally hiding incriminating evidence to the point that she is rightly seen as a prime subject of interest in the recent murders around her?
This is where things get tricky in the narrative.
I changed my mind about a dozen times while watching the movie The girl who got away because it does something different from its contemporaries in the sense that we don’t just see events from Christina’s questionable perspective; There is a level of objectivity emanating from the supporting characters that is ambiguous yet insightful as the mystery is unraveled and the authorities attempt to track down Elizabeth Caulfield.
Lots of twists and turns
Are we dealing with a psychotic serial killer who used her youth and innocence to imprison her would-be kidnapper, who is now out for revenge? Or are we dealing with a deeply traumatized and troubled woman whose memory of her own past is shattered when she learns that her life is in danger after years of repressing her childhood?
If you want answers to these questions, you can stream The girl who got away free on Tubi.
