Carolina Caroline

(Adam Rehmeier, 2026, USA, 105 minutes)

 

What better way to celebrate America’s independence than with an American independent? Adam Rehmeier’s red-white-and-blue-coded Carolina Caroline stars scream king and queen Kyle Gallner (best known for the Smile franchise) and Samara Weaving (the Ready or Not films) as lovers on the lam. Weaving’s Caroline is a wide-eyed small-town girl in rural Texas, hoping to make it out east to meet her mother, who left the family at birth. A ticket out of town is found in the form of Gallner’s roguish con man Oliver, who shows Caroline the ropes of the trade. With a charming supporting turn from Jon Gries (The White Lotus) and a grotesque one from Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer), Carolina Caroline is the kind of sexy thriller filmgoers could expect to see coming out of Hollywood in the 1990s (think Out of Sight, True Romance, etc.) but which many like to lament aren’t being made anymore. Turns out, they are still being made—you just have to look outside of the studio system to find them.