10 Movies Which Go From 0-100 Right At The End

Finnish filmmaker J-P Valkeapää's second feature film They Have Escaped (He ovat paenneet) may not have the consistent tone, visual style and emotional through-line of his sadomasochist romance Dogs Don't Wear Pants (Koirat eivät käytä housuja, 2019), but it does have a late-in-the-day switch-up that defies expectations and eschews the kid gloves lesser directors may have been tempted to don.

Joni (Teppo Manner) and Raisa (Roosa Söderholm) meet at a centre for problematic youth, Joni serving his civil service and Raisa reluctantly being detained for constant troublemaking. Soon, her penchant for mischief and his infatuation inspire a breakout, and the pair abandon the conventions and laws of society on a rambling road trip with plenty of stops and diversions. They steal, break into houses, trip balls in the woods, and encounter some pretty vibrant characters along the way. While none of this is exactly tame, the film manages to up the ante something fierce at the end.

What in Hollywood would have continued along the lines of a quirky indie coming-of-age story, in Valkeapää's hands becomes a living nightmare. Colliding with the adult world they have so deftly been avoiding in the film’s latter scenes, Joni and Raisa are kidnapped by irate landowners and kept in cages in the woods. Here, they are urinated on, physically abused, and almost drowned in blood. It's definitely not Nick & Norah.