Is there anything worse than a movie that thinks its WAY smarter than it actually is? Smugly winding you up, thinking you can’t possibly see how all of this is going to pan out, but you’re actually just sitting there, waiting for the inevitable to happen? That’s pretty much what you’re getting with We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, the film equivalent of a run-of-the-mill thriller sticking on a pair of glasses in the hopes of being taken more seriously.
Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) and B.J. (Logan Huffman) are best friends, B.J. and Sue (Mackenzie Davis) are boyfriend/girlfriend, and Bobby and Sue are leaving B.J. and their small town behind to go to the same college. As a last hooray, B.J. swipes a load of money from his boss Giff (Mark Pellegrino) to give the three of them a weekend of fun, but come Monday, Giff quickly figures out where the money went, and gives the teens a choice: rob Giff’s boss of even more money, or get killed.
Trying to reach the same levels of danger, sexiness and intelligence as campy thriller Wild Things, instead we’re left with a watered down thriller that misses each of those marks. Giff doesn’t come across as particularly threatening, the complicated sexual games within the threesome don’t quite get our engines running the way they should, and the IQ levels are sub-par at best. There are what some might call “plot-twists” peppered throughout, but not one of them are surprising or original, like the film is constantly trying to pull the rug out from under us, without realising we’re already in the next room.
At least the director duo Simon and Zeke Hawkins manage to nail down the suffocating, sweaty atmosphere of small-town criminality, and they get some decent performances from some of their leads, although between the cheating couple, robbing boyfriend and murderous loan-sharks, there’s nobody really here to root for.
There is an obvious joke about audience members saying the title of the film once they realise that it’s no good, but we’re not going to be the ones to make it.