Mike
In today’s video, we’re taking a sexy trip to Hawaii (kind of) for a tropical thriller with a strange yet awesome ensemble cast and a story that will make you question everything. This is the tale of what happens when a writer-director fed up with the rigid, wing-clipping rules of big-budget Hollywood decides to break the core rules of screenwriting, get meta with his characters, and swing for the fences with a face-melting twist that has more balls than a batting cage. This is the story of what happens when Scream, M. Night Shyamalan, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall have a baby on vacation. Or rather… what happened to A Perfect Getaway.
David Twohy’s Escape From Big-Budget Hollywood
After working on Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick, writer-director David Twohy wanted to do something that would get him as far away from Vin Diesel as possible. Not really (as far as we know). What he did want was to get away from big-budget filmmaking altogether.
Twohy set out to create an antithesis to expensive, effects-driven studio films. He wanted something smaller, closer to the actors and the camera, and free from being bogged down by massive CGI sequences. Most importantly, he wanted to spit directly in the face of the industry-standard three-act structure.
He even baked a little meta diss into the film through Timothy Olyphant’s character, a move that would have made Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven proud. The goal was to make a movie that felt raw, danced to its own beat, and actually surprised the audience.
How a Hawaiian Vacation Sparked the Story
The story came to Twohy in a way that will make anyone who’s ever had writer’s block want to punch the air in celebration. He came up with the concept for A Perfect Getaway, two murderers on the loose among multiple strangers hiking through Hawaii, while hiking through Hawaii… surrounded by strangers.
As he listened to people casually overshare on vacation, he started wondering why strangers felt so comfortable revealing personal details about themselves, and how dangerous that kind of openness could be.
That’s when Twohy did something genuinely smart. From that moment on, he began watching couples come and go, inventing backstories for them as he went. He people-watched with purpose, building his characters from real-life observations. Which means there’s a very real chance that several people walking the Earth today have seen A Perfect Getaway without realizing one of the characters was loosely based on them.
To make the movie happen, Twohy partnered with Ryan Kavanaugh and Relativity Media. Their lower-risk business model allowed him to experiment with the film’s unconventional structure while avoiding heavy studio interference.
Casting a Twist
Casting A Perfect Getaway required two actors capable of playing dual personalities without tipping off the audience. They needed to feel wide-eyed, innocent, and vulnerable, yet still believable as crack-pipe-hitting, black-eyed psychopaths when the big reveal finally landed. Think Ghostface in Scream, but without the mask or voice changer.
For Cydney (yes, that’s really the character’s name) and Cliff, Twohy couldn’t have chosen better than Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn. Both actors are wildly underrated and perfectly capable of playing dorky honeymoon tourists one moment and unhinged killers the next.
Jovovich was beginning to feel pigeonholed by her role as Alice in the Resident Evil franchise and wanted something with more depth. Zahn, meanwhile, had already proven his dramatic chops in Rescue Dawn while still being fully capable of playing a lovable doofus if the role demanded it.
Timothy Olyphant is always a welcome addition to any cast, and A Perfect Getaway is no exception. As Nick, a man who refers to himself as “a goddamn American Jedi,” Olyphant brings his trademark charisma to a character who seems knowledgeable, confident, and just possibly full of shit. Once Nick is repositioned as a good guy rather than a suspect, he becomes an easy character to root for.
He’s paired with Gina, played by Kiele Sanchez, who is completely comfortable being naked around strangers. On the opposite end of the spectrum are Chris Hemsworth’s unwashed drifter Kale and his equally feral partner Cleo, played by Marley Shelton. They’re almost too obvious as suspects… which is, of course, the point. Both give off mid-2000s Charles Manson cult energy, like they’re here to do the devil’s work but only after Limp Bizkit finishes their set.
For Hemsworth, this was an early breakout role alongside Star Trek and one of his first projects after leaving Australian soap operas. Rounding out the cast in a strangely small role is Mindhunter’s Holt McCallany as “guy in a helicopter.”
Shooting Paradise on a Budget
Cinematographer Mark Plummer, who previously shot Madonna’s “Express Yourself” music video, was tasked with the impossible job of framing Milla Jovovich against the backdrop of beautiful Hawaii. Though, in reality, much of the film was shot in Puerto Rico due to tax incentives.
Even so, the movie looks fantastic. Visual effects were used to replace Caribbean foliage with Hawaiian flora, while aerial footage of Kauai’s cliffs helped sell the illusion. Plummer relied heavily on handheld camerawork during hiking sequences to enhance tension and immersion.
The shoot lasted around six weeks and presented challenges thanks to rugged terrain. Jovovich, having recently had a baby, was more than happy to let her stunt double handle a particularly brutal kayak chase. She later described the production as far more raw, improvised, and grounded than the heavily choreographed Resident Evil films.
Release and Response
Universal Pictures also went all-in on marketing. In a clever move, they created a fake Hawaiian news station and released realistic videos covering fictional murders and missing persons cases. Whether or not it moved the needle financially, it was a genuinely creative idea worthy of respect.
With a budget of $14 million, A Perfect Getaway opened in August 2009 to just under $6 million. It eventually pulled in nearly $23 million worldwide, likely breaking even once everything was tallied.
Critically, the response was mixed but fair. Many praised the locations, suspense, and narrative originality, while others felt the film strained too hard to justify its twist. Overall, it landed squarely in middle-of-the-road territory.
Over time, however, the film’s reputation has improved. In an era where original, mid-budget R-rated thrillers are becoming endangered species, A Perfect Getaway feels increasingly rare. The unrated home-video release, featuring extra footage and an alternate ending, helped solidify its cult appeal, earning nearly $7 million in domestic DVD revenue alone.
The Mid-Movie Reveal That Changed Everything
Another element that’s grown in appreciation is how aggressively the film commits to misdirection. Twohy deliberately weaponized post-Scream genre expectations, assigning suspicious behavior to nearly every character. Casting choices, editing rhythms, and visual cues are all designed to push the audience toward the wrong conclusions. As Twohy later explained, he wanted viewers to feel ahead of the movie, right up until they weren’t.
The film’s infamous mid-movie reveal was another gamble. Instead of saving the twist for the finale, A Perfect Getaway detonates it early, then shifts into full survival-thriller mode. The move forces audiences to reinterpret everything they’ve already seen.
In hindsight, the film stands as a snapshot of a transitional Hollywood era when studios still took chances on original, star-driven thrillers without franchise branding. As streaming audiences rediscover it, the movie’s ambition feels even more impressive.
At the end of the day, Twohy succeeded in hijacking traditional narrative structure and giving audiences something different. Sometimes it just takes time to appreciate a movie’s bag of tricks. Which is probably why A Perfect Getaway plays better now than it did in 2009.
If you’re a fan of The White Lotus, this is a perfect companion piece: same sexy, dangerous vacation vibes, just without the filler episodes. Maybe someday we’ll even get a 4K release. But for now, my friends, that is what happened to A Perfect Getaway.
A couple of previous episodes of this show can be seen below. For more, check out the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel—and don’t forget to subscribe!
