In trailers, Netflix’s new release, “The Weekend Away,” portrayed the image of a captivating murder mystery, with elements of travel and drama. Instead, the movie proved to have a predictable and underdeveloped plot. The film starts by showing the main character, Beth, arriving in Croatia for a girls trip with her best friend, Kate. Kate encourages Beth to go out that night and once out, tells her how she believes she should leave her husband, who we learn Beth has been having issues with. They spend time drinking at the club with two men. Shortly after, the scene cuts to Beth in her bed alone the next morning. She doesn’t remember anything past the club from the night before, but she can’t find Kate anywhere. She looks for her throughout the day, but she’s nowhere to be found, leading her to frantically head to the police station. 

The movie follows Beth’s journey to find Kate in an unfamiliar country, with no memory of the night before. After Kate’s body is found, many of the following events are extremely predictable. We learn that Kate was having an affair with Beth’s husband, which is a common theme involved in many murder mysteries. Additionally, the movie tends to try to target many characters in the film as the murderer, simply for shock value. In the end, the police officer is named as the killer, which does not make any sense with the story line and excludes all of the information shown to the audience originally. Later, this is found to be false and Beth realizes that her husband is actually responsible. This is not as shocking as it could be since the accusation of the police officer is already unsupported. The movie also does not build on any idea of Beth being responsible, except when she is accused by the police. In a good murder mystery where the character does not remember her actions, the film could take a psychological twist. Instead, the storyline is bland and lacks developing and shocking clues along the way. 

Additionally, “The Weekend Away” moves very fast, and does not tell the audience much about the relationships between the friends and their spouses. Although it is important to focus on the mystery, it is difficult to grasp the true twists and turns without knowing much about the characters and their lives. The movie concludes when Beth captures her husband’s confession on the phone with the police, but then ends abruptly with a scene with no real significance. As an avid mystery lover, I had high hopes for this Netflix original, but was let down by the typical storyline lacking emotions and ability to connect with the audience.