The thriller “A Perfect Getaway” is a cheesy romp featuring exotic locales, menacing music, a few good jump-in-your-seat moments, several somewhat familiar actors who serenade your memory with a “where have I seen him?” refrain, a large but not “Saw”-level amount of violence, one very sticky scene involving a knife stuck in a woman’s thigh, and a plot so absurd yet predictable that I know for a fact that the editor reading this story figured out the whole thing from the 30-second TV commercial that she glimpsed while getting ready for work this morning.

OK, so don’t brag too much, Ms. Editor. I announced in the car as I drove to the theater who the killer was, just from reading the four-sentence synopsis on the press-screening notice, and I was right, too. This isn’t rocket science. Or even knife-in-the-thigh science.

Director David Twohy knows how to put together a reasonably suspenseful scene. His problem in “A Perfect Getaway” is figuring out a way to whip the three disjointed acts of his movie into any sort of cohesive suspenseful shape.

The set-up is promising: Cliff (an annoyingly bug-eyed Steve Zahn), an up-and-coming screenwriter, and his new bride, Cydney (Milla Jovovich, perky and overplayed), have traveled to Hawaii for their honeymoon. We meet them speeding along a road in the jungle, carefree and giddy in their matrimonial bliss. Their video camera, packed with images from their nuptials – which serve as the opening-credit sequence – helps us relive the moment.

But trouble is brewing in the paradise of Kaui, where Cliff and Cydney plan a multi-day hike. Word spreads among the hikers about the grisly murder of a newlywed couple on the island of Oahu. The police think the killer has jumped islands to Kaui.

By the time Twohy gets to the middle part of the film, he’s woven a pretty decent premise. Should Cliff and Cydney trust the seemingly amiable but slightly bizarre couple (Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez) with whom they’ve hooked up on the trail? Or could they be the killers? What about the strangely menacing riff-raff couple that they met on the trail earlier? Combined with the pleasant scenery, the slowly building sense of dread seems both warm and tense.

Then things start to get shaky. To put it simply, Twohy cheats. He has his characters act a certain way for the camera – even when they’re alone – just to deceive the audience. If you’ve gotten this far in the review, you probably don’t care much about spoilers, but I still can’t divulge too much. Let’s just say that when the plot twist came, I didn’t think to myself: Wow, that’s clever! Instead, my thoughts ran more along the lines of which part of filmmaker hell Twohy should be banished to.

In the final third of the film, it’s as if the director loses his grip completely. The meta movie moments – focusing on Cliff’s career as a screenwriter – become cloying, such as when one character talks about a moment making “one hell of an Act II twist.” (Get it? He’s predicting the Act II twist, and perhaps it is the Act II twist.) And with other characters blathering on about “fevered dreams of detachment,” there’s a whole drug-rush twist that gets positively psychedelic on us.

All I know is that more than a few audience members were laughing, not terror-stricken, as the film built to its climax.

Of course, that’s what some people want out of a cheesy romp: a few good jumps, a few good laughs. Just don’t go to “A Perfect Getaway” expecting a perfect thriller.

A PERFECT GETAWAY

Grade: C

Rated R for graphic violence, language including sexual references and some drug use. Stars Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, Kiele Sanchez. Directed by David Twohy. 1 hour, 37 minutes.

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