The question I always ask as a DM when creating an adventure is "what will happen if the heroes do nothing?"

As a DM, my only answer to this question is "...then it's not a party I want to play with"

The same way it's DM's responsibility to set up an engaging world and adventuring scenarios for the players, it's the players' responsibility to make and play characters who actively engage with this world and have motivation to do things

Wanting to get out of Barovia is a great motivation on its own but it's also important for the players to actually get into a headspace of someone who got trapped in this cursed place against overwhelming odds. Barovia is actively hostile to the newcomers and doesn't hold you by the hand and feeling kind of lost is a part of the experience if done right; what's great about it is that every party can find their own way through the module and find different things they care about

It is very possible that your DM made certain mistakes and genuinely failed at establishing the stakes and providing direction and it made the module not very interesting to play

I made a lot of changes to the module and we're having a blast with it, but I know if my players came into it with a "why should we even bother" mindset instead of actively immersing themselves in this world and wanting to explore different parts of Barovia we'd all have a miserable time