Vague Visages’  Get Away review contains minor spoilers. Steffen Haars’ 2025 Shudder movie features Nick Frost, Aisling Bea and Sebastian Croft. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

The name Nick Frost isn’t exactly synonymous with horror. The lovable British actor is best known for starring opposite his lifelong pal and frequent collaborator Simon Pegg in Edgar Wright’s celebrated “Cornetto Trilogy.” But it’s worth noting that Hot Fuzz (2007), the strongest installment, is technically a slasher movie by Wright’s own admission. In fact, Timothy Dalton’s local shopkeeper even jokes that “I’m a slasher, and I must be stopped.” It’s not too much of a stretch, then, to imagine Frost feeling inspired by Wright’s winning mixture of horror and comedy while writing something dark and similarly offbeat like Get Away, in which he stars as a hapless father named Richard. When the protagonist’s oblivious middle-class family descends on a tiny Swedish island, all hell breaks loose, but not in the way that one might expect. 

Get Away, which is directed by Dutch filmmaker Steffen Haars, opens with a creepy throwback to the olden days, cluing viewers into the violent history of Svalta before a title card cheekily announces that it’s now “200 years later.” The Smith family — Frost as Richard and Aisling Bea as Susan, along with Maisie Ayres as their daughter, Jessie, and Heartstopper’s Sebastian Croft as the son, Sam — bicker in a car en route to a ferry, which will spirit them away to a remote island. The locals display unfriendly behavior, to say the least, and the Smiths get told that they should not have visited Svalta.

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Suffice it to say, like most middle-class folks looking for adventure at the cost of locals’ comfort and even their safety, the Smith family doesn’t heed a warning and rocks up to the remote island looking for a fun vacation. The only person genuinely happy to see them is Matts (Eero Milonoff), who rents his late mother’s home out as an Airbnb and has the kind of quirky charm that instantly makes the Smiths feel like they can trust him. Naturally, Matts quickly reveals himself to be a bit of a perv, complete with hidden cameras stationed around the property (so, your typical Airbnb host). Much like everything else about Svalta, there’s something off-kilter about Matts, but it’s tough to put a finger on exactly what it is. 

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Get Away is much sillier and more experimental than it seems on the surface, but you have to stick with it past what feels like an endless rehash of stuff that’s already been seen in other horror movies, including the most obvious comparison, Midsommar (2019). When did Sweden get so scary? Without venturing into spoiler territory, Get Away takes a sharp left turn that impressively isn’t telegraphed but will certainly reward future revisits. There’s a ton of obvious foreshadowing, with beheadings featuring heavily and an early discussion about cannibalism, but Get Away ultimately defies narrative expectations, much to Frost’s immense credit as the screenwriter. 

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Frost, a beloved actor, winningly plays off his own hangdog persona as Richard in Get Away. He famously fumbled a standup comedy career until his BFF, the aforementioned Pegg, gave him a much-needed kick up the butt by writing a character he’d created into Spaced (1999), a cult hit sitcom starring Jessica Hynes. Fans of that show might spot some overlap with Get Away’s sweet but short-tempered Richard, who has a lot more rage hidden under the surface than he lets on. In addition, Frost’s character bears a certain amount of resemblance to the actor’s shy dancer, Bruce, in the criminally underrated 2014 film Cuban Fury. Meanwhile, Bea — a burgeoning movie star — is hugely charismatic as Susan, who’s excited just to be going away with her family and gets them to enjoy the unconventional holiday by sheer force of will. It’s also heartening to see a loving married couple represented on screen, especially one that joyfully ribs each other without either party taking offense or storming off to inevitably get murdered. 

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Get Away has a lot going for it, from the scenic location (Finland doubles for Sweden) to the strong performances, and there are a few great jokes sprinkled throughout too (a jibe about the Irish holding a grudge for too long is pitch perfect). Haars also shows some flair for staging action-packed, violent sequences, especially one set to Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.” Being generous, the movie could be taken as a metaphor for English colonialism and the destruction it causes, but even just as an oddball horror-comedy, it’s reasonably diverting for the most part. Still, the pacing is off, which makes the final act feel rushed when just a few more pertinent details would’ve helped both Haars and Frost stick the landing a bit better. Again, it’s impossible to delve into any further plot points without spoiling the film, as Get Away takes a significant amount of time to set up a payoff that isn’t given the requisite space to breathe once the big moment arrives. It’s entertaining up until that point, but there will sadly be viewers who give up long before and will essentially miss the film’s best sequence.

Get Away releases on January 10, 2025 via Shudder.

Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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