Based on Sarah Alderson’s thriller novel, “The Weekend Away” is a classic Netflix film that takes you on a ride in the beautiful city of Dubrovnik, and then, in the end, offers nothing. It is like an adventure theme park, with lots of twists and turns and a murder investigation that drives the narrative further, but if anyone is looking for something meaningful, then the film is a major disappointment.
Directed by Kim Farrant, the film follows two best friends, Beth Jenner and Kate Thompson, who visit Croatia from London for a weekend away and spend time together. However, the sudden disappearance of Kate leaves Beth perplexed. She tries to locate her friend in foreign lands and is hit with life-altering revelations. Hence, without any further ado, let’s find out what happened to Kate and how her disappearance changed Beth’s life completely.
‘The Weekend Away’ Plot Summary
Beth Jenner (Leighton Meester) is a London-based woman who lives with her husband, Rob (Luke Norris), and their newborn girl, Aster. A common friend of the couple, Kate Thompson (Christina Wolfe), is on the verge of a divorce with her husband, Jay, and thus decides to spend a weekend away from the stress in Croatia with her best friend, Beth.
Kate books an apartment with a local owner, Sebastian, who is also a film composer. The film begins as Beth arrives in Croatia and meets Kate at Sebastian’s apartment, from where the girls plan their night out and a bike tour the next day. However, an ominous expression on Kate’s face hints at impending tragedy.
Later that night, Kate and Beth visit a local bar, The Blue Parlor, and even after Beth’s hesitation, Kate gets Beth drunk. Under the influence of alcohol, Beth and Kate meet two escorts, Mateo and Luka, and in the very next frame, Beth wakes up the next morning with a hangover, unable to recollect the incidents of the last night, and above all, Kate is missing without a trace.
At first, Beth visits the police station and tries to file a missing person’s report, but the inspector in charge, Pavic, refuses to file a case and requests Beth to wait for 24 hours. In the meantime, Beth enlists the help of a Syrian taxi driver, Zakaria “Zain,” to catch Mateo and Luka and finds out that they stole Kate’s Dior purse and cell phone, which she finally recovers from a pawn shop. However, Kate’s phone is locked, and the escorts have no idea about Kate’s whereabouts. With the new information, Beth revisits the station and files a complaint with another lady officer, Kovac, who conducts a rigorous investigation and recovers Kate’s dead body from the harbor.
Kovac picks up some evidence that frames Beth as Kate’s killer, and thus the police seize her passport until the investigation is completed. Meanwhile, Beth, with the help of Zain, tries to find out who the real killer is to prove her innocence.
Who Killed Kate?
Beth found Kate’s cell phone at the pawnshop. However, the phone was locked with a face ID. Hence, Beth unlocked it with Kate’s dead body during her second visit to the morgue. On Kate’s cellphone, Beth found out that she constantly called a contact named “Handyman.” She called the number from Kate’s cellphone and suddenly discovered that Kate’s handyman was none other than Beth’s husband, Rob, who was cheating on her wife with her best friend.
Beth was stunned by the revelations and confronted Rob with them on a phone call while her conversation was recorded by the creepy landlord, Sebastian, who had planted a pinhole camera and a microphone in each and every rented room. Through Sebastian, the police got information about Rob and Kate’s affair that gave Beth a motive to kill Kate. But Beth was confused about how the police got this information, and so, in Sebastian’s absence, she sneaked into his private recording room, where she found a grand setup from which Sebastian was recording obscene clips of his guests.
Through these clips, Beth also found footage from the night of Kate’s disappearance and figured out that the escorts, Mateo and Luka, stole Kate’s purse, so she went after them and filed a complaint against them in the police station where she met Pavic. However, Pavic was a corrupt police officer and an indecent man who tried to hit on Kate, and when she rejected him, he cursed her. Beth saw the footage in which Pavic dropped Kate back to her apartment and thus concluded that Pavic killed Kate. But it wasn’t true.
After Pavic’s accidental death from falling off a building, Kovac closed the case, surmising that maybe during her encounter with Kate, Pavic lost control of himself and assaulted Kate, killing her. But when Beth returned to London, she went back to Rob’s apartment to get her spare car keys after their separation, and in the pocket of his jacket, Beth found a single bead of a black onyx necklace that belonged to the same piece that Beth had gifted to Kate in Croatia. Hence, Beth concluded that Rob was in Croatia on the night of Kate’s murder, and when she confronted him with this new information, Rob finally confessed to killing Kate.
‘The Weekend Away’ Ending Explained: Why Did Rob Kill Kate?
After the birth of Aster, Beth and Rob’s marriage met with a rough patch, and the intimacy in their relationship disappeared. While Beth was struggling with her own insecurities, Rob acted on his manly instincts and cheated on his wife with Kate, who was also struggling with a failed marriage with Jay. However, for Kate, the casual one-night stand didn’t mean anything, and maybe she just wanted to make Jay jealous. However, Rob, deprived of any intimacy, got obsessed with Kate and started contacting her repeatedly to sleep with him, and Kate wanted to end this impulsive, casual affair.
It was that night in Croatia when Kate was dining with Beth, and Rob called her to stop her from revealing his secret to Beth, but Kate refused to listen to him. Rob tried calling and texting Kate multiple times, but she didn’t respond, which compelled Rob to come to Croatia, where he waited outside their apartment. When Pavic dropped Kate off at the apartment, Rob came out of the shadows and took Kate to the harbor lines, where Rob begged Kate not to tell Beth anything. He also put forth a condition that if Kate wanted to reveal their secret, then she should spend her life with him, and he would leave Beth for her.
However, Kate neither wanted Rob nor wanted to hide her affair with him from Beth. Rob felt helpless and lonely. The thought of losing two women made him lose his mind, and in the heat of the moment, Rob assaulted Kate, and she fell down on the rocks, hit the back of her head, and rolled into the water. Rob thought Kate was dead and ran away, but Kate drowned in the water that resulted in her death. He could have saved her, but he decided not to.
Before confronting Rob, Beth had called Kovac and kept the call on. Hence, in a way, Rob confessed his crimes to the police, and Kovac quickly sent units to Rob’s London apartment to get him arrested. Rob tried to stop Beth when she remembered Zain’s advice to hit on the soft spots and attacked Rob, knocking him to the ground. At the end of “The Weekend Away,” Beth walked out of the apartment with her daughter Aster while the police cars approached Rob’s apartment. They will probably arrest the culprit and charge him with Kate’s murder.
What Happened To Zain?
With Zain, Beth sparked an unlikely friendship that began at the beginning of the film. In a foreign country, it was Zain who became Beth’s support system and helped her to investigate Kate’s murder. Beth connected with Zain on an emotional level because he was a Syrian refugee and Beth used to work with the Global Rescue Initiative (maybe before she got pregnant with Aster). Hence, Beth could feel the horrors that Zain faced during his escape from Syria and the pain of losing his wife in the bombings.
Beth trusted Zain with her heart, which is why even when Kovac revealed to Beth that Zain had connections with an Albanian gang, Beth gave a chance to Zain to tell his side of the story. Zain, too, wanted to save his relationship with Beth and hence kept no secrets from her, which is why, even after Kovac closed the case and dropped all charges against him, Zain and Beth remained in touch.
It can be speculated that after the arrest of Rob, Beth might continue her relationship with Zain and decide to pursue it further. And if that happens, then, in the end, Zain and Beth will finally start a happy family together, in London or in Croatia, wherever they find their peace.
“The Weekend Away” is a 2021 crime thriller film directed by Kim Farrant.
