No one asked for a big-screen, horror-tinged reboot of Fantasy Island from Blumhouse, but we got one anyway. It wasn’t really a hit or anything, but because of COVID, it’s currently sitting on the list of the top ten highest grossing movies of the year with a paltry $27 million at the box office. I tell you, 2020 is wild, y’all.
Tourists come to the remote titular destination to live out their fantasies. A pair of brothers want to party it up. A woman wants a second chance at love. A soldier wants to reconnect with his dad. Fairly standard stuff.
Most of the horror aspects come from the girl who wants revenge on the bully who made her life miserable in high school. These torture porn scenes eventually lead to zombie attacks, phantoms with black goop drooping out of their eye sockets, and some typical Monkey Paw/Faustian Bargain bullshit. All this is surprisingly watchable for the first half or so, but everything begins to fall apart once the guests’ fantasies start to become interconnected.
The biggest problem is the length. Seriously, there’s no way a horror movie version of Fantasy Island needed to be nearly two hours long, especially when the last act is practically a never-ending series of plot twists. They could’ve easily lost a half-hour out of this thing and no one would’ve noticed.
Another problem is that Michael Pena is sorely miscast as Mr. Rourke. I mean nobody could top Ricardo Montalban, and Pena doesn’t even try. He plays things way too seriously, and without his usual comedic energy he flounders, particularly when he’s trying to be subtly sinister. The noticeable lack of the Tattoo character further helps to tarnish the memory of the original show.
It’s also hard to care about most of the guests or their fantasies, save for Maggie Q, who clearly thinks she’s starring in a different, better movie. Heck, the flick even manages to waste Michael Rooker, who plays a detective who knows the island’s secret. What a disreputable feat that is.
For my money, the greatest Fantasy Island spin-off was Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island, and you can’t convince me otherwise.
AKA: Nightmare Island.
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