A twisted serial killer searches for one last victim in Tubi’s suspenseful thriller
Pa Robert Succi
| Published
Watching psychological horror films is always very easy for me because genre conventions often limit the narrative in very obvious ways. After watching hundreds of movies that prominently feature an untrustworthy hero with a troubled past that leads to questionable present-day behavior, I keep coming back for movies like The girl who ran away. While this film makes you question what is real rather than imaginary, it becomes abundantly clear that sometimes you have to take things at face value, despite the build-up that would have you think otherwise.
That means The girl who ran away sets up the premise and makes you question his chain of events, but only before bringing everything back full circle with a third-act payoff that doesn’t feel like a total letdown.
The girl who ran away
The girl who ran away lays all its cards on the table in the opening sequence, set in 1998, as a man and his boy drive down a dark country road. Seeing a bloodied woman brandishing a knife, the father stops to see what he can do to help and forces his son to keep the door closed. When the little girl bangs on the car window, the boy lets her in, discovering that she is a missing girl named Christina Bowden (played by Victoria Semenenko in this sequence), who has escaped from the captivity of serial killer Elizabeth Caulfield (Kay Tuckerman).
In the present day, Christina (Lexi Johnson) has grown up and works as an elementary school teacher. Realizing that she would have no chance of reaching adulthood without someone to take her in after running away, Christina adopts Lisa Spencer (Willow McCarthy), a troubled teenager who reminds her of herself in an attempt to make peace with her own violent past. . While Christina lives a normal life to the best of her ability, her world is rocked when Officer Jamie Nwosu (Chukwudi Iwudi) tracks her down to report that Elizabeth Caulfield has escaped from prison and seems hell-bent on finishing what she started years ago.
Safe house and body count
The titular runaway girl is in hiding under Jamie’s watch, but wants to look like no one is worried about her well-being. Constantly looking over her shoulder, Christina becomes righteously paranoid as her past comes back to haunt her, but not without experiencing blackout episodes where she wakes up with blood and dirt on her hands, making you repeatedly question her innocence. While I’ve never doubted Christina’s innocence, it’s hard to ignore the fact that death seems to follow her wherever she goes, as if she’s harboring some deep, dark, hidden secret that she’s not. wants to be excavated.
A surprising turn of events
The aforementioned statement The girl who ran away it seems like the rest of his run will lead to something as far-fetched as 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 experience a twist ending that goes beyond what you expect on average psychological horror the movie.
Is Christina so worried that she might become an unreliable witness in several cases? Undoubtedly.
But is she deliberately withholding incriminating evidence to the point that she is rightly seen as the main person of interest in the recent murders surrounding her?
This is where things get risky in the story.
While watching it, I noticed that I changed my mind about a dozen times The girl who ran away because it differs from its contemporaries in the sense that we don’t simply see events unfold from Christina’s questionable perspective; there is a level of objectivity that comes from the supporting characters that is ambiguous but telling as the mystery comes together and the authorities try to track down Elizabeth Caulfield.
There are many twists and turns
Are we dealing with a psychotic serial killer who used her youth and innocence to apprehend her alleged kidnapper, who now wants revenge? Or are we dealing with a deeply traumatized and troubled woman whose memories of her own past are shattered when she learns that her life is in danger after repressing her childhood for years?
If you want answers to these questions, you can stream The girl who ran away free on Tubi.
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