I had a fundamental misunderstanding about this movie that completely changed its makeup for me. Luckily, I would say the change was for the better. A Perfect Getaway chronicles the fates of three couples on vacation in Hawaii who, while hiking in the largely unpopulated wilds of Kauai, are constantly dogged by rumors of a man and woman who gruesomely murdered a pair of newlyweds in Honolulu just days before. So, what I thought I went to see was a horror movie, in which the couples face a gradually hopeless game of cat and mouse against the killers. Instead, the movie is a suspense thriller in which each couple suspects the next of being the harbinger of their doom.

I think that’s the most I can safely say, suspense thrillers being what they are. I will add that our main characters shine pretty brightly, Steve Zahn continuing his [largely successful] quest to transform a supporting actor’s looks and general air into a leading actor’s success using nothing but his talent, and Milla Jovovich successfully portraying a bubbly, vivacious, and merely moderately attractive leading actress with talent you would not suspect her knockout looks to be capable of. (If you found that sentence nauseating and impossible to get through: they were good!)