With nothing holding her down but a dead-end job and an aging dad, a small-town Texan girl is swiftly bedazzled by a smooth criminal drifter, and hops into his car to pursue a life less ordinary. The premise of “Carolina Caroline” could be copy-pasted from innumerable American road movies, from landmarks like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Badlands” to far paler imitations, and where it heads from that point isn’t particularly novel either. But Adam Carter Rehmeier‘s thriller, like many a good B-movie, adds up to more than the sum of its parts, with star power and star chemistry its major elevating, unquantifiable factors. Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner, two fine actors rarely granted the glow that comes with a proper star vehicle, positively bask in it here; together, they give a potentially standard film an active heart rate.
Which isn’t to disregard Rehmeier’s direction, or indeed the crisp, efficient script by William Thomas Dean IV: Both work within a firm genre tradition, but bring enough texture and humanity to proceedings to keep them from feeling strictly generic. Released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures following a Toronto premiere last year, “Carolina Caroline” deserves to find a dedicated following. And that’s something Rehmeier knows to patiently wait for, after his 2020 sophomore feature “Dinner in America” earned TikTok-boosted cult status (and a belated theatrical release) a whole four years after its quietly received Sundance competition bow. Bigger assignments surely await him.
