By Robert Scucci | Published
Watching psychological horror films is always a hit or miss experience for me, as genre conventions often limit the storytelling in painfully obvious ways. After watching hundreds of films featuring an unreliable protagonist with a troubled past that leads to questionable behavior today, I return again and again, looking for films like The girl who got away. Although this film begins to make you question what is real versus what is imagined by its protagonist, it becomes clear that sometimes you have to take things at face value despite the buildup that would make you think the opposite.
That’s to say, The girl who got away establishes its premise and makes you question its chain of events, but only before bringing it all full circle with a third-act payoff that doesn’t feel like a total cop-out.
The girl who got away
The girl who got away lays all its cards on the table in its opening sequence, set in 1998, when a man and his boy drive down a dark country road. Seeing a woman covered in blood and brandishing a knife, the father stops to see how he can help her, urging his son to keep the door locked. When a little girl knocks on the car window, the boy lets her in and discovers that it is a missing girl named Christina Bowden (played by Victoria Semenenko in this sequence) who escaped from the captivity of serial killer Elizabeth Caulfield (Kaye Tuckerman).
Nowadays, Christina (Lexi Johnson) is grown up and working as an elementary school teacher. Realizing she wouldn’t have had a chance of reaching adulthood without someone taking her in after her escape, Christina adopts Lisa Spencer (Willow McCarthy), a troubled teenager who reminds her of herself. to try to make peace with her. own violent past. While Christina lives a normal life to the best of her abilities, her world is turned upside down when Officer Jamie Nwosou (Chukwudi Iwuji) tracks her down to let her know that Elizabeth Caulfield has escaped from prison and seems determined to finish what ‘she started. many years ago.
The hideout and the body count
The titular girl who got away is hiding under Jamie’s watch, but wants to keep up appearances so no one worries about her well-being. Constantly looking over her shoulder, Christina becomes rightly paranoid as her past comes back to haunt her, but not before experiencing blackout episodes during which she wakes up with blood and dirt on her hands, you causing his innocence to be questioned on several occasions. While I’ve never had any doubt about Christina’s innocence, it’s hard to ignore the fact that death seems to follow her everywhere she goes, as if hiding some deep, dark, buried secret that she does not want to reveal. dug up.
A surprising turn of events
The above-mentioned summary of The girl who got away it feels like the rest of its runtime would result in something as contrived as Christina being the murderer all along and blaming Elizabeth for the crimes she actually committed as a child. Without spoiling the plot, I can assure you that you will experience a twist ending that is not what you would expect in an average psychological horror film.
Is Christina troubled to the point of being an unreliable witness in several cases? Absolutely.
But is she intentionally hiding incriminating evidence to the point where she is rightly considered the primary person of interest in the recent murders surrounding her?
This is where things get dicey in the story.
I changed my mind a dozen times while watching The girl who got away because it does something different from its contemporaries in that we don’t just see events unfold from Christina’s questionable point of view; there is a level of objectivity on the part of the supporting characters that is ambiguous but revealing as the mystery is pieced together, and the authorities attempt to find Elizabeth Caulfield.
Twists and turns galore
Are we dealing with a psychotic serial killer who used her youth and innocence to lock up her supposed captor who now seeks revenge? Or are we dealing with a deeply traumatized and troubled woman whose memory of her own past fractures 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 for free on Tubi.
