By George & Josh Bate
The outlaw romance genre, arguably pioneered by 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde and followed by seemingly countless derivations, has certainly become over-saturated in recent years, but director Adam Carter Rehmeier finds a way to overcome the over-familarity of this trope in Carolina Caroline, a new romance crime thriller soaked in retro flair.
Carolina Caroline stars Samara Weaving as Caroline, a disillusioned Texan gas station worker lulled into tedium by an uneventful life. This changes when Caroline comes across Oliver (Kyle Gallner), a charismatic con man she is instantly drawn to. The two decide to make a journey to South Carolina, where Caroline hopes to be reunited with her estranged mother, and carry out a series of robberies and cons along the way that puts their fast romance in jeopardy.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to speak with Adam Carter Rehmeier about his new movie, its grimy depiction of the American South, working with Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner, setting the story in the early 2000s, and more.
Unfolding entirely in small towns across Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and other Southern states that likely look very similar now compared to how they did 40 years ago, Carolina Caroline presents a less-than-picturesque depiction of the American South. “I’m kind of obsessed with that American kind of underbelly a little bit,” Rehmeier explained. “I think it’s in my work. And so to put my stamp on it and be able to kind of find that in rural Southern parts of the country were really interesting. And it’s not having it be squeaky clean, but have everything very lived-in. I’m obsessed with that.”
There’s a barren, almost depressive quality to the America that Rehmeier depicts, one characterized by seedy bars, desolate stretches of road and fields, and a sense that the rest of the world is moving at a much brisker pace.
This latter point proves critical to Samara Weaving’s protagonist, a young woman who uproots her safe yet monotonous life to saddle up with a mystery man for a life of crime. Weaving has been prolific in the horror/thriller comedy space for nearly a decade now, but her role in Carolina Caroline affirms, if it wasn’t abundantly clear already, that the Australian actress has a real old school movie star quality about her.
“I had seen her in Ready or Not and I really loved her in Ready or Not,” Rehmeier said. “And I met with her in person. She was really dressed down and very funny and very real and very grounded. I think, from my angle, that’s how I saw her in the movie. Of course, she’s very striking as well. But I wanted her to feel kind of like an average girl. And I think that she had that ability to do it through humor and just being grounded and very real….I really felt like she really grounded Caroline where people could identify with her.”
Opposite Weaving is the remarkably underappreciated Kyle Gallner. The actor known for his roles in Smallville and Strange Darling enters the film with charisma in spades, introducing himself to the audience (and Weaving’s character) with a nifty quick-change scam as the con man Oliver.
Carolina Caroline marks Rehmeier’s second collaboration with Gallner after previously working together on the breakout hit Dinner in America. “We’ve become really, really close friends after Dinner in America,” explained Rehmeier. “I consider Kyle a brother. Outside of shooting, we talk about our own ambitions, what we want to do, types of characters we want to plan. And when I read the script, I just thought, ‘Oh man, this is perfect for Kyle.’”
Gallner and Rehmeier are teaming up again for another film, the genre-bending A Bobby Thing that recently entered post-production.
Gallner and Rehmeier had plenty of time to discuss Oliver and his role in Carolina Caroline as the film faced a number of setbacks. “We had the pandemic and then we had the strikes,” detailed Rehmeier. “This movie was actually supposed to shoot like a year or so before we actually shot it. Obviously, it’s a summer movie and you can’t really go there in the fall or winter. It’s going to feel totally different with the clothing. You can tell on screen that it’s hot. When we shot it, it was 100 degrees a lot of the time. And you can’t really fake that. So we had to wait for it to come back and cycle through yet again after the strikes.”
Rehmeier imbues Carolina Caroline with a retro quality that immediately evokes memories of Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise, Gun Crazy, and Badlands. The filmmaker also names Wild at Heart, True Romance, Vanishing Point, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry as influences.
The film doesn’t clue the audience into the year in which it takes place until very late into the runtime after a character’s birth year is off-handedly mentioned. There are no smart phones and no modern technology, and yet the film could just as easily be set in 2026 as it is in 1976, giving it not only a retro feel but a timeless quality.
Rehmeier discussed why he set his movie filled with 70s thriller flair in the early 2000s. “It got increasingly harder to rob banks just for the CCTV,” stated Rehmeier. “You’re going to get caught with everything that’s going on now. So I thought the perfect little sliver would be to set it in the early aughts [around] 9-11 and all of that. And when I read the script, I really wanted to make a kind of 70s road movie. The script kind of demanded that it be a 70s road movie. But I decided to set it in the early aughts, because I think it would be kind of a retro, fun throwback.”
Unlike some of the aforementioned outlaw thrillers, Carolina Caroline is relatively (and purposefully) light on the action. “A lot of films [have] a lot of gunplay,” described Rehmeier. “This has zero, except, when it does, it’s very heavy. One gunshot changes the whole trajectory of the film.”
Rehmeier is spot on. A single gunshot during the film changes the direction of Caroline and Oliver’s lives forever. It also leads to one of the best chase sequences we’ve seen in 2026 so far, unfolding in the streets of a small Southern town after a bank robbery goes wrong.
“We scouted Frankfurt, Kentucky and that’s where we found the framework for how it would work,” Rehmeier explained while discussing how he crafted the chase scene. “And then [cinematographer Jean-Philippee Bernier and I] physically walked all of that location and mapped it out. The two of us on a weekend. We told everybody we didn’t want anyone to come with us. Just wanted quiet….We physically walked everywhere from the bank to where they go to how and took pictures of how we were going to stitch it together. When they go into the hardware store and that other street, it’s far away from the actual hardware store actually where they come out. It was all over the place. So we had to piecemeal together this thing. It would sort of trick your eye and you would think they’re all a continuous location, but they were radically not continuous at all. So it was hard and they were sometimes half a mile away from the other one. We had to keep jumping around to achieve that.”
During the interview, Rehmeier told a funny story involving Samara Weaving during this chase scene. “While we shot the part where [Kyle’s character] tells [Samra’s character] to get in the trunk,” Rehmeier said, “I remember going over with the P.A., who had the key and everything. I was like, ‘You have the key for this, right? When we put her in the trunk of that car.’ And he was like, ‘Yes. I have the key. I had everything.’ As soon as that closed on her, he magically lost the key and did not have it. And it’s a hundred and some degrees in Kentucky with your number one on the call sheet in the back of a car. ….Luckily, the key was found a few minutes after she got the mark.”
Another pulse-pounding moment in the film comes in the form of a cameo from Emmy winner Kyra Sedgwick. The Closer actress appears in just a single scene of Carolina Caroline but leaves a lasting, disconcerting impression. “I can tell you that, [for] all the changes that were made to the script, that place in the script had zero touches to it,” Rehmeier said regarding Kyra Sedgwick’s scene. “It was always like that, although we changed a lot of other things in the script and did an overhaul to it. That scene I always thought was just a standout scene.”
“I had told [Kyra] ahead of time that I would not flow break her on the day, that we would be able to shoot all of her scene work continuous so she could have the full arc that the character has,” Rehmeier continued. “Part of the reason why I think the scene is so good is because we just did it continuous and we treated it like a one act play. Kind of its own thing.”
Carolina Caroline may not break new ground for the over-saturated outlaw romance genre, but it overcomes the familiarity of its narrative with an aesthetic soaked in retro and a duo of superb lead performances. Fans of 70s outlaw thrillers and/or admirers of early 2000s nostalgia will find plenty to enjoy in Adam Carter Rehmeier’s new film.
Watch the full interview with Carolina Caroline director Adam Carter Rehmeier below….
