by Robert Scocchi
| Published
Watching psychological horror films is always a make or break experience for me because genre conventions often limit storytelling in painful, obvious ways. After watching hundreds of films that prominently feature an untrustworthy protagonist with a troubled past that leads to questionable behavior in the present, I keep coming back again and again in search of films like The girl who walked away. Although this film starts out by making you question what is real versus what the film's hero imagines, it becomes abundantly clear that sometimes you need to take things seriously despite the buildup that might make you think otherwise.
This means, The girl who walked away It sets up its premise and makes you question its series of events, but only before bringing everything back full circle with a third-act payoff that doesn't feel like a complete walk-off.
The girl who walked away
The girl who walked away He puts all his cards on the table in its opening sequence, set in 1998, when a man and his two boys are driving down a dark country road. Upon seeing a woman covered in blood and brandishing a knife, the father stopped to see how he could help, prompting his son to keep the door locked. When a young girl bangs on the car window, the boy lets her in, only to discover that she is a missing girl named Christina Bowden (portrayed by Victoria Semenenko in this sequence) who has escaped the captivity of serial killer Elizabeth Caulfield (Kay Tuckerman).
In the present day, Christina (Lexi Johnson) is grown up and working as an elementary school teacher. Realizing she wouldn't have a chance to fight her way into adulthood without someone to hold her after running away, Cristina adopts Lisa Spencer (Willow McCarthy), a troubled teen who reminds her of herself, in an attempt to make peace with her. Own violent past. While Christina is living a normal life to the best of her ability, her world is rocked when Officer Jimmy Nwosu (Chukwudi Ewoji) tracks her down to tell her that Elizabeth Caulfield has escaped from prison, and seems determined to finish what she started. Many years ago.
Safe house and body count
The girl who ran away is hiding under Jimmy's supervision, but she wants to keep up appearances so no one will worry about her safety. Constantly looking over her shoulder, Cristina becomes truly paranoid as her past comes back to haunt her, but not without experiencing blackout spells in which she wakes up with her hands covered in blood and dirt, making you doubt her innocence on more than one occasion. Although there was never any doubt in my mind regarding Christina's innocence, it was hard to ignore the fact that death seemed to follow her wherever she went, as if she were hiding a deep, dark, buried secret that she didn't want to be. find out.
A sudden turn of events
The summary mentioned above The girl who walked away It seems like the rest of its runtime will lead to something contrived like Cristina being the killer all along and blaming Elizabeth for crimes she actually committed as a child. Without spoiling the plot for you, I can assure you that you will encounter a twist ending that falls outside of what you would expect on average. Psychological horror film.
Is Christina so disturbed that she has become an unreliable witness in several cases? definitely.
But is she so deliberately concealing incriminating evidence that she is justifiably considered the main person of interest in the recent killings surrounding her?
This is where things get dicey in the narrative.
I found myself changing my mind about a dozen times while watching The girl who walked away Because she does something different from her contemporaries, in the sense that we don't just see events playing out from Christina's questionable perspective; There's a level of objectivity that comes from the supporting characters, one that's ambiguous but telling as the puzzle is put together and the authorities try to track down Elizabeth Caulfield.
Twists and turns abound
Are we dealing with a psychopathic serial killer who used her youth and innocence to trap her supposed captor who is now out for revenge? Or are we dealing with a deeply traumatized and disturbed woman whose memories of her past are shattered when she learns her life is in danger after repressing her childhood for years?
If you want to answer these questions, you can stream The girl who walked away Free on Tubi.
