CAROLINA CAROLINE (2025)

Starring Samara Weaving, Kyle Gallner, Jon Gries, Kyra Sedgwick, P.J. Sosko, Victoria Cabral, Bryan McClure, Jenny Frame, Ed Formica, Sonny Burnette, Andy S. Allen, Mark Pettit, Melissa Cox, Juan Graterol Jr., Robert Robertson, Robert Stevens Wayne, Anthony Horton, David Schifter, Milton Saul, Patricia Garvin, Jennifer Uphold, Mark Humphrey and Gregg Gilmore.

Screenplay by William Thomas Dean IV.

Directed by Adam Carter Rehmeier.

Distributed by Magnolia Pictures. 106 minutes. Rated R.

It’s a tale as old as time. Good girl meets bad boy. She falls for him because he’s handsome and exciting. However, soon she learns the dark side of excitement.

Carolina Caroline retells a familiar story but treats it less as romance and more as a cautionary tale – and that choice makes it compelling, if not entirely satisfying.

Samara Weaving is Caroline, a pretty young woman living in small-town Texas with her dad and working at her pop’s gas station and mini mart. Her mom left when she was a little girl and she never knew why. She feels stuck in this town, stuck in this life. She is looking for an escape.

Oliver (Kyle Gallner) blows into town in a vintage muscle car and impresses her with some really pretty smalltime cons – the one they keep returning to was stolen directly from the 1973 film Paper Moon, and even then, it was probably a pretty old scam. It’s not like he’s getting rich from the hustles; he gets a ten-dollar bill here or a free beer there, but it is mostly pretty petty grifting.

But she’s bored and has wanderlust and a need for adventure in her life, so she quickly hooks up with him. Soon, like so many film couples before them in films like Badlands, Bonnie & Clyde and Natural Born Killers, they hit the road to see America, and their crimes start to ramp up. They are officially supposed to be going to South Carolina to find her long-lost mother, but there are a lot of sidetracks before they get there.

They go from pickpocketing to identity theft to bank robbery in a period of weeks. He teaches her the ropes and then lets her loose. Interestingly, he usually makes her do the hard part – like physically pickpocketing people or robbing banks – while he serves in the much safer role as coach and the getaway driver.

However, every once in a while, he shows how volatile he is, and it scares Caroline, who is starting to feel in over her head, particularly when the law gets on their trail.

Director Adam Carter Rehmeier keeps the film grounded with an unglamorous, almost dusty visual style that undercuts any sense of romanticism, emphasizing the wear and tear of life on the road rather than its freedom.

When she finally tracks down her mom (Kyra Sedgwick) and it blows up in her face, they decide to make one last big score so they can escape the police and find a new life somewhere else.

And you know what happens when someone plans for one last big score.

At one point Caroline says to him, “I don’t know if we’re good people pretending to be bad, or bad ones pretending to be good.” But in the long run, does it even really matter? They may be good people down deep (and that is debatable), but they are leading with the bad.

Of course if they weren’t, there really wouldn’t be much of a story.

The pacing mirrors Caroline’s emotional journey – starting off loose and curious, then tightening as the consequences of their actions begin to close in, giving the second half a more anxious, claustrophobic feel.

Still, whether you buy into Carolina Caroline mostly depends on whether you find desperate crime sprees and life on the run romantic or sad. I tend to come down on the sad side of that argument. Therefore, even though I liked parts of Carolina Caroline, and Samara Weaving is terrific in the title role, overall I can’t say I really enjoyed the movie.

And by the time it hit the almost inevitable conclusion, I can’t say I felt too sorry for them. (Well, her a little, him not so much.) Carolina Caroline ultimately reminds us that stories like this aren’t romantic rebellions – they’re cautionary tales, no matter how charming the people telling them may seem at first.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2026 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: June 3, 2026.