By Sharai Bohannon

Adam Rehmeier’s Carolina Caroline offers love, crime, and tragedy.

Carolina Caroline sees genre royalty Samara Weaving (Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come) and Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling) team up. This casting is one of the things working in the film’s favor, as they both bring their A game and have endless chemistry with the world. Even if they each weren’t acting like rent was due, it would be easy for them to sell this whirlwind romance. They manage to capture the audience from jump and refuse to let go even when you realize this is not the kind of heist film you expected.

Caroline (Weaving) is living in Texas with her dad, Hank (Jon Gries). She works at a gas station and seems aimless until Oliver (Gallner) sweeps in. She’s taken by this conman who seemingly has a heart of gold. She decides to hop in his vintage car and learn some of his tricks as she follows her heart. The duo embarks on a road trip through the South that is a love letter to an idealized version of America. However, it’s shot gorgeously, which makes it hard not to lean into this Americana on display. More obviously, it’s nearly impossible to deny anything Weaving and Gallner are selling in these cinematic streets. What starts as small cons and a couple of lost souls desperately clinging to each other quickly escalates. Caroline pitches Oliver the idea of robbing banks. He eagerly obliges and figures out a system that works a little too well. He’s the getaway driver, and Caroline is the one with the wig going into the banks. Things are going well, but you just know this is going to end badly, and it does. Just not for the reasons you’re thinking. 

It’s when shit hits the fan that Carolina Caroline finally snatches you out of your seat. It goes from being a cute little movie about two young people making bad decisions to a pressure cooker. The stakes suddenly get very high, and the feeling of the walls closing in is so palpable that you almost forget to breathe. This is when Caroline and Oliver find out who they’ve hitched their respective wagons to. Was it really love, or was it lust? How well do these two really know each other? Who do they become under this level of stress? Will they turn on each other when they are cornered? More importantly, is there a way out of this that doesn’t end in prison or death? 

People familiar with Dinner in America will be unsurprised that Adam Rehmeier’s Carolina Caroline is not the kind of thriller most would expect. Rehmeier seems to be a romantic and is more interested in love than violence. His interest in outcasts and misfits finding soulmates in small towns follows him here. While Carolina Caroline has the bones of a great thriller, the director chooses to put that on the back burner. You can see that the more dangerous version of the story lurking just underneath. While that plot is more enticing, and frankly would’ve been so much more fun to see this cast play with, what we get isn’t a bad time either. This feels like a more adult simmer than the bloody boil we expect for a film about heists. 

When I caught the film last year, I assumed this couple was heading for a severe betrayal. I was finally starting to heal from being wrong and had made peace with this being a good movie anyway. Although it begs for one extra complication or twist even after a second viewing. However, Rehmeier shared with the Chicago audience gathered at The Music Box that he chose to lean into the romance. Where Tom Dean’s script initially took a different route, the end product is something sadder, gentler, and probably slightly less gripping. The director chose love over betrayal. It makes it less predictable for jaded people and also allows him to build to a tragic end for this affair. 

While many people are going to harp on how sexy they found Carolina Caroline, I think it’s because they find the leads attractive. If anything, the juxtaposition of sex and crime builds an interesting narrative. These two young people are colliding with each other as they are lost. Their search to fill their individual voids is what propels them to the life of crime and each other. They see each other in the other’s unhealed inner moppets and are trying to numb the pain they have no remedy for. Caroline’s mom walked out when she was a small child, and she hasn’t recovered from that. Part of her reason for going on this trip is to talk to her mother and get answers. When she finds her, it’s not what she envisioned, and it sets her up for the landslide of bad decisions and reflexes that result in the worst day of her life. 

Oliver’s dad also abandoned him at an early age, and his mother’s attempt to protect him backfired. This set him down the path of being a stylish swindler who trusts no one. We can imagine his retro car and TV Land outfits are probably inspired by pictures he’d seen of his old man. Carolina Caroline feels outside of time, but we do know it’s before 9/11. We also know from a fake ID that no one bats an eye at someone as young as Oliver being born in 1970. So Oliver’s character details give us a window into the fact that he’s on the run from his own internal childhood disappointments. It doesn’t hurt that Gallner is in his anti-hero era. Oliver is another role he manages to bring depth to, and illicit empathy for, that would flatline in the hands of less skilled actors.

Weaving and Gallner churn out some of their best work to date. The duo brings texture and nuance to these characters that elevates Carolina Caroline to something more compelling than it seems at first glance. They find levels in Caroline and Oliver that force us to invest even while realizing this is a much more straightforward relationship than it should be. They take us through the full gamut as we fall for them, and then we fear for them when the bottom drops out. When things go wrong for the couple, it quickly becomes obvious that they will not be getting a happy ending. So, the actors get to segue from charming criminals to two people on borrowed time who reflexively make the wrong choices. 

Carolina Caroline has big country vibes to fit the southern road trip whirlwind romance. From the music to the cars to the motels, it oozes this small-town charm and country music narratives. So, we’re not surprised that when Caroline finds her mom in a bar, she’s a mean drunk. Deborah (Kyra Sedgwick) basically spits venom as she makes it clear she still doesn’t want anything to do with Caroline. While this scene is hard, it doesn’t feel like enough to shatter our lead the way it does.

Due to Caroline’s individual character arc being a bit unpolished, Weaver has to keep us with her even when we have valid questions. I hate that this woman finally lives and then finds herself with such a run-of-the-mill situation. Also hate that part of her story was telegraphed miles away. That’s almost as annoying as her mommy issues preventing her from handling business. Many women have difficult relationships with their mothers and still manage to work high-stress jobs on both sides of the law. Her sudden regression, causing her to freeze and fumble, paired with having a bun in the oven, feels too simple. Which means if we’re exploring the potential and depth of individuals in small towns across America. It hurts in a way too similar to a Doctor Who companion being banished to return to a life less ordinary after traveling through time and space.

This is one of the many things that makes Carolina Caroline feel just a smidge too simplistic for all of the things working in its favor. As viewers, we can let many things go. The aesthetic and acting alone make a handful of nitpicky things a small price to pay for admission. Specifically, Rehmeier’s romanticization of the South and lingering shots of the couple’s cool car on the road could’ve been condensed. However, he’s building a vibe, and it is what it is. It’s not a big enough cog to stop the wheel, like most of the small issues clouding the film. While this movie doesn’t reinvent the formula, and I can’t help wishing it hit the gas pedal a few times earlier on, there is something here. Rehmeier did the old bait and switch. He made us look at a hand holding a thriller while he pulled a romantic indie drama out of our ear. Yet, it’s hard to be mad at that by the time the credits are rolling, and you can’t get this unassuming moment out of your head.