Diksha Sundriyal
2021’s ‘The Girl Who Got Away’ is a horror-mystery drama that follows the story of a girl who survives a deeply traumatic incident, only for it to come up again two decades later. While taking place in the present day, the story unravels a secret from twenty years ago, when a serial killer was caught after one girl survived her killing spree. At first, it seems like a straightforward case, but as a detective starts to dig into it, he discovers that there are many more secrets that never surfaced, and have now come back to haunt everyone who was involved in the case. The film ends on a shocking note, leaving the audience with questions about who the real victim is in all of this. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Girl Who Got Away Plot Synopsis
‘The Girl Who Got Away’ opens with a man driving his son home from a school game. On the way, they come across a woman, dressed in white, covered in blood, and carrying a huge knife. The vigilant father decides not to stop and races away, even as his son wonders if they should help the lady. At a short distance, they see a girl, dressed in white, and visibly scared. As the car passes by, she hides herself. This time, the man becomes concerned and decides to help her. As he leaves his son alone in the car, the girl shows up, and so does the woman. Luckily, the man returns just in time to knock out the woman and call the police. It turns out that the woman is named Elizabeth Caulfield and had killed four other girls whose dead bodies are found buried in her backyard.
The girl identifies herself as Christina, who went missing about five years ago, and whose entire family had been killed by Elizabeth. Twenty years later, the girl has built a life for herself as a school teacher. She has also applied to adopt a teenage girl named Lisa, who has been through a difficult time, jumping from one foster home to another. In the midst of this, she receives the news that Elizabeth has escaped and there is a good chance she will be coming for Christina. The town’s sheriff, Jamie Nwosu, is tasked with protecting her by the former sheriff, Gerry Bailey, who had arrested Elizabeth. At first, it seems the serial killer is headed in the opposite direction. But then, Christina’s ex, Tom, is found dead, which leads to another violent murder spree.
Is Christina Katie? Is She Elizabeth’s Daughter? Who is Her Father?
As Jamie Nwosu starts looking into Christina’s case, he is shocked to discover that she was the first girl that Elizabeth abducted, and even after five years, she somehow survived the ordeal that the other four girls couldn’t. He kept wondering why Christina was the only one that Elizabeth didn’t kill, and the answer to it is revealed at the end, when we discover that the girl whose story we have been following isn’t actually Christina. She is Katie Caulfield, Elizabeth’s daughter. Jamie discovers that before she was found to be a monster who kills little girls, Elizabeth Caulfield was a normal woman. She was a nurse in the pediatric ward and was very skilled at her job. The parents loved her, and so did the rest of the staff. She never had a blemish on her work, but it was her personal life that eventually led to her undoing.
It turned out that she had been having an affair with a married man. The nurse who wrote the report for Elizabeth’s firing from the hospital tells Jamie that the man was an officer of the law. While the name is never uttered in the movie, it isn’t difficult to deduce that Elizabeth’s secret affair was with former sheriff Gerry Bailey. What made it worse was that Elizabeth was also pregnant, which made Gerry even more desperate to save his reputation. He knew that if the details about his affair were made public, he would lose everything. So, he forced Elizabeth out of her job and her community, leaving her to raise their illegitimate daughter, Katie, in the woods where no one would find out about them. Still, Elizabeth never stopped dreaming about having a life with her lover, so she would keep him updated about Katie. She would make videos, one of which was later found by Jamie, where young Katie reveals her age to a mysterious “him.”
Years later, when the truth about Elizabeth’s crimes came to light after a man and his son accidentally found Katie, Gerry was still focused on preserving his reputation. When asked her name, the girl said her name was Christina. Because Gerry had been receiving videos from Elizabeth, he knew that the girl they found was actually Katie. However, if he pointed that out, then it would open the Pandora’s box of questions, which would unravel the secrets that he had worked so hard to protect. So, when Katie became Christina, he decided not to touch the matter. In any case, the real Christina’s entire family had been killed when she was kidnapped, so there was no one left alive to call out Katie’s lie. Elizabeth was in prison, and the matter was already closed. Over the years, he kept an eye on Katie/Christina, driving by her house, sending her cards on her birthdays. But he never came forward to claim her as his because he thought that no one ever needed to know this secret.
What Happened to the Real Christina? Why did Elizabeth Abduct the Other Girls?
When Elizabeth is caught, the extent of her crimes comes to light. It turns out that she had been abducting one girl every year, with each girl being one year older than her previous victim. When one girl died, she would abduct the other, and this went on for five years. Because no one knew about Elizabeth’s daughter, everyone believed that all five girls were accounted for. Christina (who’s actually Katie) was alive, while the bodies of four other girls were found buried in Elizabeth’s backyard. No one knew why Elizabeth abducted and killed the girls, and the reason was chalked up to her being a crazy psychopath. It isn’t until years later that Jamie finds Katie’s video, and the analyzer discovers the presence of another girl around the time when the other four girls were already dead. This means that there was a sixth girl who remains unaccounted for. What happened was that young Katie did not like to be alone. She had lived in the woods with her mother, but as she grew up, she asked for friends, sisters.
Because Elizabeth couldn’t take Katie into town to befriend others, she decided to bring friends for her instead. This is why she started abducting girls. She would kidnap the ones who were the same age as her daughter so that they could play with each other. In doing so, she would kill the girl’s entire family, leaving the child family-less, but that doesn’t mean that her victims didn’t try to run away. She tried to terrorise them into following her rules, which included the part about not running away from the house. However, when the opportunity presented itself, the girls couldn’t resist the idea of running away to their freedom, and that’s when Elizabeth would kill them. Katie had no choice but to help her mother dispose of the bodies. In the end, she was left with Christina, who was her best friend. After living under Elizabeth’s terror for so long, they decided they would run away together. However, when the time came, Katie couldn’t do it, leaving Christina to run away by herself.
This, however, ended the same way it did for the other girls. Elizabeth caught Christina, killed her, and buried her right in front of her daughter. This filled Katie with such guilt that she tried to dig her friend out of her grave with her hands. This guilt is also why she eventually decided to run away on her own, which is when she was found by a good Samaritan, leading to Elizabeth’s arrest. And this is also why she chose to name herself Christina, rather than revealing her identity as Katie. The guilt carried on in the form of her sleepwalking habit, as she would go to Christina’s grave and bleed her fingernails trying to dig her out. Because it wasn’t just that she’d gotten Christina killed, it was that while the other girls were found and laid to rest, Christina was still buried and forgotten. No one was looking for her because no one knew she was dead. So, in the end, when the fake-Christina calls herself Katie, she is not just reclaiming her own identity, but she is also giving it back to the real-Christina.
Is the Social Worker Dead or Alive? Did Christina Kill Him?
One of the things the movie does really well is to establish a perception around Christina, aka Katie, as the potential killer. Her sleepwalking is used as a red herring to hint that maybe it is she, not Elizabeth, who is going around killing all the people she has beef with. This is why, when the social worker shows up at her house to confront her about her criminal record, which she didn’t disclose when applying to adopt Lisa, it seems that he will be at the receiving end of her wrath. She has an axe in her hand, and she ends the conversation by telling the social worker that her record is not the only thing she hid from them. She reveals that Christina is not her real name. The scene suddenly cuts to her digging a grave, which makes it look like she has killed the social worker and is now burying his body. This, however, is a misdirect. The social worker is alive and well, and the grave that Katie is digging is Christina’s.
The truth is that even after all these years, Katie couldn’t let go of her mother as well as her best friend. She holds on to Christina, fearing what being Katie will truly mean to her. She worries that she will turn out violent and frenzied like her mother. This possibility scares her even further because, despite all that Elizabeth did, Katie stayed in touch with her. She would go to meet her in prison and write letters to her, telling her everything that was happening with her. She told her about her foster parents and how her foster father would beat her when he got drunk. She told her mother about Tom, who cheated on her and broke her heart. She also shared her desire to have a child and start her own family. Elizabeth wanted her daughter to have what she wanted, though she chose a rather violent way to go about it. This is why, when she escaped from prison, she killed Tom and then Katie’s foster parents.
Eventually, she headed to Gerry’s house, killing him and his wife, and cutting the baby out of his pregnant daughter’s womb. She presents the baby to Katie, showing her that she is giving her the child she wanted, especially now that Lisa is dead. By this time, however, Katie had come to terms with the fact that she needed to move on. As long as she kept her mother close, Elizabeth would find an excuse to keep killing people. Lisa’s death shows her that she cannot run away or hide from her problems, especially if she wishes to move on and really be a mother to someone else. This is why she digs up Christina’s grave and tells Jamie about it. This is also why when the paramedic in the end asks her her name, she calls herself Katie, not Christina. She is finally ready to own up to who she is and start healing.
Read More: Is Stephen a True Story? Is He Based on a Real Serial Killer?
