By Dan Skip Allen

In modern films, filmmakers like to combine genres. Sometimes, these even have a name like neo-noir or nio-westerns and so forth. That’s what the latest film, “Carolina Caroline” from Director Adam Carter Rehmeier is. It’s a combination of a western and a heist film set in the 90s. As a neo-western, similar in tone to “Hell or High Water”, it serves its purpose quite well, it also reminded me of “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. Two movies I’ve come to adore over the years. I think in time people will come to adore this film as well. It has a lot of heart and shows people that do bad things aren’t exactly bad. They just get labeled that way.

Caroline (Samara Weaving) is a young country convenience store employee from Texas when a young, good-looking man comes into the store she works at and plays a con on the old, unaware store clerk. This catches her eye, and she approaches the man, Oliver (Kyle Gallner), about his wrongdoing. Later in the evening, at a local watering hole, she confronts the man once again. This leads to some drinking and dancing, and the next thing you know, they are having sex. She’s curious about this man and asks him to explain to her what he does. Before you know it, they are pulling cons together. Then, they eventually start robbing banks. Going from state to state in their pursuit of riches and happiness.  They are having a blast doing the robberies, but crime doesn’t pay as many movies have shown.

Samara Weaving is a young actress known primarily as a scream queen. She’s done horror movies like “Ready or Not” and its sequel currently in theaters. This movie is a bit different for her, considering projects like “The Babysitter “ and “Borderline” were more horror centric. She uses a southern accent, as her character is from Texas. This helps define the character and who she is. She’s this innocent young girl at first, but as things start to get more serious, she is thrust into more like and death situations. She has great chemistry with the Gallner character, though. They seemed like they had been acting together for years. That’s how good they were in this movie. She has progressed very nicely as an actress.

Kyle Gallner is an actor I’ve liked for a while now. Ever since I first saw him in “The Passenger”. He, similar to Weaving, has done a lot of horror films, like “Smile 1 & 2”  and “Strange Darling” in his career, but it’s roles like this that I want to see him do more of. When he first comes into the convenience store, he owns every scene he’s in. He has a leading man quality about him now more than ever. Especially in this movie, where he reminded me of Paul Newman. That tracks because of my earlier comparison to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid “. I was glued to the screen with every scene he was in. He is an actor I’ve been rooting for to get bigger and bigger regarding the projects he’s in, and this film showed me he’s become a full-fledged movie star. He has that quality.

Besides Weaving and Gallner, there is one specific character that gave me the chills with her one scene performance, and that is Kiera Sedgwick as the estranged mother of the Weaving character. As they say, we can’t choose our own parents, and I, for one wish I could have. The writer Tom Dean made sure to put a message of bad parenting in this film involving this character in particular. She was a piece of work. Parents can be considered heroes in some contexts, but another saying is, “You don’t want to meet your heroes because they’ll let you down. That’s the case here as well. This woman was not a good person at all, but Sedgwick brought her to like perfectly if that’s what the script was going for. She steals the scenes she’s in from Weaving.

Besides a neo-western heist film, this movie had two other things that I enjoyed about it. The first is a framing device. The framing device was used to show where this character was at the end of the film, but the meat and potatoes of the story was the middle section. I like a good framing device, and this movie had a great one that intrigued me quite a bit. The second aspect that gave this more a different feel was a road trip film. They went from state to state robbing banks and escaping the law in every one of them. The filmmaker let the audience know where they were at each point of the story. Obviously, the title gives away a major destination, but it’s worth the wait to get there. I loved how Rehmeier combines genres with this movie. 

The music, specifically the main song, “Carolina” by Jonathen Edwards, was very catchy and sung by various artists multiple times. Christopher Bear was the composer of the score, and this combined with other artists who sing songs from the soundtrack, like Loretta Lynn, Chris Stapleton, and Jason Isbell gave the film a specific folk rock sound. The music in the movie was one of the best parts of it. These songs and scores played beautifully within the context of the narrative. I enjoyed them very much.

“Carolina Caroline” is a movie that combines multiple elements, and they are all successfully well done. I’m a big fan of nio-westerns or neo-noirs, and this one was fantastic. Both Weaving and Gallner owned the screen. Every scene they were in together showed their great chemistry on screen. I loved how both actors changed their personas regarding the choice to do something different like this that they hadn’t done before. It worked out very well for everyone involved. The music was a big part of why this movie worked as well. I loved the main song “Carolina”. Hopefully, this movie will be seen by a bigger audience in theaters. I caught it at the Florida Film Festival 2026 as its opening night movie, and I was glad I did. It’s a terrific film that film aficionados of all levels should see.

4 stars