TUBI ORIGINAL: Escaping Paradise (2023)

Floyd (Deji LaRay) and Zena (Shayla Hale) head to the Phillippines to celebrate their fifth anniversary. While there, they meet one of the few English speakers, Kane (Simon Phillips). In fact, Kane’s lover, Nihla (Kylah Dela Peña), barely speaks a word. One night, when Zena is tired, Kane asks if he can borrow her husband for a guy’s night. Of course, that turns out like something out of The Hangover, but it’s murderous instead of fun hijinks. Are you surprised that Kane is a dangerous fugitive? Well, our protagonists are!

Directed by Paul Tanter (Age of the Living DeadStealing Chaplin) and written by LaRay, this ends up with people dead, Zena kidnapped and Floyd looking for help to save his wife and get off the island. I mean, once you watch a guy act like a jerk in a strip club, you know what kind of person he is. I don’t see why the young lovers got mixed up with this guy, but we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise. You expect Kane to kill exotic dancers like Flower (Christies Paglinawan).

Floyd must not get much vacation time because while his wife is being taken by a wanted international fugitive, he’s taking his time eating a traditional Filipino dinner when his wife could very well be getting tortured and killed. I was also kind of confused by the attitude of Ambassador Danilo (Ken Bressers) at the end, who goes from “you’re in trouble” to “you’re heroes” in the exact same scene. There was no drama there, just one weird conversation. And if my wife dealt with all this drama and I wanted to go play basketball before we went home, I’d be going home divorced.

You can watch this on Tubi.