Last summer, I read the book House of Salt and Sorrows, and I had no clue what to think.

I never knew who the “bad guy” was until the end of the novel, which made me love it; The Weekend Away on Netflix felt similar.

In the movie, Beth (Leighton Meester) and Kate (Christina Wolfe) go on a girl’s trip to Croatia. Kate takes Beth out for an expensive night at dinner with her ex-husband’s credit card, then to a club: The Blue Parlour. At the club, Beth and Kate end up sitting with two mysterious men, Luka (Marko Braic) and Mateo (Lujo Kuncevic). Kate begs Beth to let loose a little and have fun with these men, even though she is married to Rob (Luke Norris). After a few drinks, Beth seems to cave. Suddenly, the movie cuts to the next morning straight from the club. Beth wakes up startled by a shout from Kate in her dream. She gets up and leaves her room to meet up with her friend. Kate is nowhere to be found.

I feel as though I watched five seasons of an ultra-dramatic television show in less than an hour and a half. So many things were going on. First, it was a girl’s weekend. Then, one girl—who is known to disappear to party—disappeared, and, in the end, it became a whole murder mystery. Don’t get me wrong, though, I absolutely loved it.

With so much going on, I have to applaud the movie writers for keeping all the information organized and verbalized for the viewers. I never felt lost by the ever-evolving plot, which I frequently find happening to myself with complex plots in other shows, books, or movies. 

What I loved most about the complexity of The Weekend Away was that it changed my feelings about each of the characters as more information was unraveled. My opinions about the main characters changed–like Beth’s did. When police officers, Pavic (Amar Bukvic) and Kovac (Iva Mihalic), tell Beth certain bits of information about people like Zain (Ziad Bakri), or when she figures out information on her own about people like Sebastian (Adrian Pezdirc), I felt my perceptions of the characters shift along with Beth’s. 

While it was easy to believe what Beth believed, at the start of the movie, there were some details that made me untrusting of some of these characters. For instance, Beth’s husband Rob seemed very reserved and freaked out when FaceTiming her with their daughter, Aster. He seemed almost nervous, but at that point in the film, there was no reason for him to be. Another character I became suspicious of was Pavic. When Beth went to the police station to file a missing person report for Kate, Pavic didn’t record any of the information Beth gave him. This immediately bothered me because the least he could do is keep hold of the information just in case she really was missing. Then, he could’ve filed the actual report with that information after the 24-hour window. 

In the end, The Weekend Away kept me constantly intrigued and is making me want countless movies similar to the unpredictability of this film.