Can you see what's coming?

Film review: Safe Haven (12a)
Running time 105 minutes
Rating:**
What with hurricanes blowing in at regular intervals, alligators in all the creeks and the widespread belief that the Northern States won the Civil War by cheating, the population of states south of the Mason-Dixon Line might think they have got the brown end of the stick.
But, similar to any good travel film, Safe Haven demonstrates how wrong you can be by showing us all the happy, sunny and pleasant sides of South Carolina and all points further south.
People wander in and out of other people’s houses, folks just want to give you things, and their hospitality would win a gold medal at the Olympic Hospitality Games (if such existed).
It’s just the sort of place that might attract a fresh-faced young suspected murderer, with shifty eyes, a habit of jumping at loud noises, and the desire to live in an isolated forest cabin with shabby chic décor.
That’s the premise behind the film, with young fugitive Erin (Julianne Hough) fleeing from a disaster in her past, ending up in a small coastal town and finding some kind of sanctuary.
She is befriended by female neighbour Jo and is gradually attracted to shop owner and widower Alex (Josh Duhamel) and his two cutsie kids.
Despite her jumpiness and worry about encountering the police, she gets used to small town life, until someone from her past traces her and turns up to exact revenge.
There’s a couple of twists to this fairly low-key tale – one revealed half way through, but the other coming right at the end and catching everybody out.
I know a little about legendary American hospitality, but I’m not sure how a stranger would be accepted in a small town so easily that she has a job, boyfriend, house and a circle of first-name term friends before she even gets a bag unpacked.
Hough and Duhamel play their characters well, although Hough’s acting sometimes appears stilted, not helped by a hammy script.
Safe Haven doesn’t place too many demands on its audience and it is disappointing that the final twist in the narrative teeters on the weepy side of sentimental, when it could have been much sharper.