Whilst working at her small town’s gas station, Caroline (Samara Weaving) watches on with bemusement as grifter Oliver (Kyle Gallner) cons his way to a few extra bucks by confusing the owner over changing some small bills. Meeting him later at a bar, their romance blossoms and Oliver soon finds himself teaching Caroline the tricks of the trade on a road trip for her to meet the mother who abandoned her as a baby.

Carolina Caroline is a B-Movie that feels like a number of young lovers on the run crime spree movies. Terrence Malick’s Badlands came to the forefront of my mind as Oliver plucks Caroline from the small town that is all that she has known and introduces her to the big wide world and all of the tricks that come with it.

Caroline, a small town gal, has always wondered why her mother left her as a baby but has always been too scared to try and find out. Oliver gives her the strength to do something that she has never done before and as we see him teaching her his grifter ways, we see her grow in confidence and stature. Of course, as their ambitions grow, so do the cons they perform and the attention they attract from the authorities. Nothing ever lasts.

Weaving and Gallner are perhaps the most charismatic actors working in this genre right now and the pair have the sort of chemistry that any filmmakers would give their right arm for. The pair are utterly convincing in their doomed romance and it is a compelling watch. Weaving has recently been cast in Marvel’s upcoming X-Men movie after delivering compelling performances in a range of horror and B-Movie flicks and it feels like it can only be so much time before Gallner gets a big film offer as well, especially with the recent Strange Darling breaking out as a cult hit.

Carolina Caroline shows that you can deliver a film that feels familiar whilst still giving it its own stamp.