ESCAPE (2024)
3 stars
The Movie Partnership. Digital Download. 30th September
A strong opening – we are in the desert. A scantily woman is running for her life. She is chased by a man – contacted on his radio he says she is too damaged and won’t sell… she is injured, as she fell, and has a branch sticking out of her side. He leaves her to die but she manages to pull it out and creeps up on the man who has been chasing her and smacks him to the ground with a rock and stabs him to death with a knife and a pick axe. So far so bloody.
Spin back to 24 hours earlier. Tamsin (Ksenia Islamova) and Karla (Sarah Alexandra Marks) arrive at the flashy apartment in Fuerteventura where they are staying for a holiday. Another girl Lucy (Sophie Rankin) has also just arrived for a break elsewhere on the island.
Meanwhile a sex trafficking gang is planning to kidnap 10 blonde girls who must be ‘hot’ – as a boat with a container is on its way. They have 3 days.
Tamsin and Karla are relaxing on the beach when they are approached by good looking Jude (Louis James). They pass up an invite from him – not realising he is part of the operation. He follows them back to their vacation home. Karla opens the door when someone knocks – they are both kidnapped and taken to a remote location run by the gang boss Andras (Sean Cronin, doing his best to seem evil and nasty) and Karla is slung into the cell in the basement alongside several others girls, whilst Tamsin is taken to a special room so that Andras can ‘test the merchandise’. I think we all know what that means…
Tamsin is resourceful and formulates a plan so they can all take action and try and get out of this dire situation – ‘do or die’. The only other girl that stands out is Lucy as all the others are interchangeable. Meanwhile, in England, their parents are desperately trying to get in contact with their daughters. They bring the police in who start to investigate using all the resources they can. Will they manage to escape and be rescued?
To some degree this is a modern take on the women in prison movies from the 70s which were turned out by the likes of Roger Corman’s outfit New World – though leaving out the more exploitative elements like the dominatrix prison warden and gratuitous nudity. However it doesn’t stint on the violence.
This a slickly made thriller though it lacks subtlety or nuance. At one point it attempts to get psychological when Tamsin and Lucy share their past traumas that have made them strong and want to fight back. It is well shot aided by the sunny location (though the underground scenes were shot in Newhaven Fort in the U.K.). The last third features some brutal bloody violence and lots of running around in the desert with the drone being given a good work out.
Steve Kirkham
