- I remember really disliking this film, let’s see if that’s changed.
- Wait, is “Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island” the proper title? I know there’s been a few versions but usually you can distinguish them by the year for organisation purposes. You don’t need to clarify in the title, surely? When you do something like that it just seems like they know it sucks and they’re trying to make it good by making you think of something else they’ve done. It’s goodwill by association, and they’ve forgotten that I’ve already seen this film, so all it’s doing is bringing Blumhouse down in my eyes.
- I actually paid to see this at the cinema, it’s the only film I’ve paid to see at cinema in years. Which might explain my anger towards it. Well it’s a combination of that, and the film itself.
- The Blumhouse logo is well made but to me it’s far too busy.
- wTo give you an idea of the quality of this film: Nicholas Cage turned it down.
- A woman is being chased and she breaks into a house. Just because you’re going to die doesn’t mean you can break the law, lady! Two wrongs don’t make a right. Also it later turns out that she was kidnapped and taken to this island on a boat. But this scene takes place on the island. So how did she escape the first time? And why didn’t they show her initial kidnap instead?
- “Mr. Roarke, the plane, it’s here”. Couldn’t even go with “the plane boss, the plane”?
- Oh boy, Lucy Hale is in this. I haven’t seen her since Truth Or Dare, which was also directed by same guy who made this. This is sure to be great.
- “smile everyone, smiles” So the idea is to make sure all the guests are welcomed by warm and happy faces? So why make it so all the staff look incredibly creepy?
- At least this film kicks off quickly, once you get past the opening section it shows the guests landing very quickly. I mean, you still get the “the plane is here” scene, which, why? Is to show the boss? Why would you do that? You hold off on actually showing someone like that, surely? You build up a legend around him, and then introduce him. That way he gets cinematic power. You don’t get cinematic power by showing him doing admin.
- The characters: Gwen (played by Maggie Q, which is possibly the coolest name ever), Melanie (played by the aforementioned Lucy Hale), Patrick (played by “No I’m not the guy from Avatar” Austin Stowell), and brothers JD and Brax (played by Ryan Hansen and Jimmy O Yang) who seem to have walked straight off an SNL sketch called “The Douchbros”
- “I heard he brought it from the natives for six cases of rum” yeah, well I heard if two people close their eyes and pretend it’s someone else, it’s no homo.
- “everything is possible” is it possible for this to be a good movie?
- Also considering everything is possible, their fantasies are quite dull.
- Creepy Michael Rooker is staring at them from afar.
- I’m guessing Julia (the woman who welcomed them) is dying because she has a bloody nose. Which is the instant sign of death in a movie. Someone could get shot in the face and you’d wonder “hmm, they might survive”, but a trickle of blood from the nose? They’re doomed. Doubly doomed if they’re coughing (with the exception of that film: The man had a cough, just a cough and it’s fine)
- So many of the hotel staff are hired purely because of how creepy they are. They only exist because this a horror movie.
- “I’m double fisting” wait did I put in the wrong Fantasy Island?
- “you two can take Patricks bungalow and he can bungalow with me” “I can get pretty noisy” Okay, even I would recognise those as come-on lines. Okay I’m about to mention something that I feel is going to come up A LOT in this, it turns out this whole thing was Melanies way of getting all these people killed because she holds them responsible for the death of a boy she liked. With that in mind you’d think she’d want to keep a slightly low profile. And definitely not ask personal questions because the more this group talks, the more chance they have of discovering their lives are all connected. All it would take is “oh I was at this hotel last year blah blah blah” and would be met with “no shit, us too” and then Melanie would either have to lie and say she was there, or be the only one not there, either way risks suspicion. She should want to isolate the other people, what she shouldn’t do is what she does here “so what’s your fantasy? That’s for the room actually”, a question which is just dying for at least one of them to mention the fire and how they could take it back.
- Michael Pena’s Mr. Roarke makes an appearance. This would have a bigger impact if we hadn’t met him.
- “You will begin your fantasies after a good nights rest”, one sentence later “your fantasy begins now”.
- The lighting of this scene is horrible. It’s multicoloured bright lights but they’re so washed out that it almost makes everything fuzzy.
- Their fantasy btw is “to have it all” which basically means a massive party. Obviously this goes wrong when it’s revealed the house they’re having the party on used to belong to a drug gang. Wait, what? How is that the natural conclusion? The logical conclusion would have been about the horror of long-term hedonism and the exhaustion of it. Basically this
- Gwens fantasy is to have a do-over with one of her ex’s proposing to her. She’s confused because she knows that in a sense it’s not real. Although why is Roarke interviewing her when the island is supposed to magically know?
- “I will try to make this work” but you said you had no power.
- “This is fantasy island, it’s as real as you make it”, what a cop out.
- “I’d ask you about your fantasy but you didn’t want to talk about it last night” oh yeah, that question never got answered on screen. So, what was the point of it? It just led to them discussing how they think it’s done, which they could have done anyway without that question.
- Patrick wants to play army. He wanted to join but his mum wouldn’t allow him so he joined the police. There’s an obvious political statement there about how the police view themselves as the army instead of protectors or guardians, but that’s too deep for a film like this.
- Despite never serving, he carries army dog tags around with him “for luck”. We later find out they belonged to his dad who was wearing them when he was killed. Not that lucky then. I tend to base my “lucky” jewellery around “did someone die while wearing this? If so, not lucky”
- Melanie’s is to get back at a childhood bully. It later turns out she’s also getting revenge on everybody else, so does she get two?
- Melanie’s former bully (Sloane) is there. And she seems surprised and says out loud she thinks it’s a hologram. Again, she planned all this and knows it’s not, so who is this for? I’ve seen some people defend this with “she was recording it on her phone” but she put her phone down after pressing record and walked away from it. So I doubt the phone will be recording her speaking in clear enough audio to make this charade worthwhile. The entire thing is like the twist ending was written by someone completely different from the rest of the film. And why record it anyway? Nobody else will ever see it it’s just for your personal use.
- Sloane gets wet. Again I think I picked the wrong Fantasy Island.
- “woah, that is not her husband” Do you keep up with who your bully is married to? Bit weird. Also, who recorded that? They would have had to do that BEFORE she got on the island and if the Island is only powerful in it’s own borders, then how did that happen?
- The video of her cheating gets uploaded on facebook, suspiciously quickly. And her husband sees it, again, seemingly being controlled by the island.
- Melanie looks shocked that it’s actually her (but only after somehow going from not knowing what the buttons do, to managing to switch to security camera footage from 2 days ago). Again, why is she shocked? I’m sorry to bring this up again but it’s so fucking stupid.
- Brax had sex last night. Now, are they actual people? If so, do they have free will? What’s the consent situation?
- “my life is not on hold because of you, it crushes because of you” weirdly poignant line there.
- Gwen is still on her date. It’s the next morning in the other party. How exactly does time work? At some point in the future the fantasies converge into one moment, but they all started at the same moment and took different lengths of time to get to final point. HOW DOES THIS WORK?
- “this is the reboot” subtle.
- They set off grenades. Alerting the people in Patricks fantasy. See, the fantasies crossing over could be a really cool interesting idea, but it just fucks the timeline up for all of them.
- “my fantasies didn’t involve bondage” mine do.
- Melanie still has Sloane tied to a chair, so what exactly has she been doing?
- “I wanted to humiliate her and make her cry but this is not what I meant” it was though. Sloane can’t see you so this isn’t to get her on your side, the guy you phone knows the truth, so again, WHO IS THIS FOR?
- And now another Melanie fantasy, Dr. Torture. So she gets three of them? That’s just greedy.
- Back at the party, and the people toting guns showed up. “sounds like Kalashnov, a businessman who owned the house. The problem with having it all is that others want it”. That’s….that’s not the natural ending to this fantasy. “Oh, I don’t want a big house and lots of parties because if I did then the former owner of the house will turn up and shoot me” is not a normal thought.
- “what about that psycho stalker girl? The one who wrote the letters to everyone?” okay you know who Melanie is and that you went to school together. How do you now remember she was the letters girl considering that that was mainly how you knew her.
- “unless your fantasy was to die, you better come with me” stays completely still what can I say, bro, it’s not a good time for me.
- “dazed and confused, you know, like that movie that came out last year” Can you guys help me moving this expository dialogue? It’s way too clunky for me to handle on my own.
- Patrick gets his own childhood nickname wrong.
- “I was born premature and doctors thought I wouldn’t make it, you told me this every birthday”. How did that go? “Happy birthday, here are your presents, now let me tell you about how you nearly died”.
- “our journey was long and hard” hah, he said hard, like a penis.
- Patrick is trying to stop his dad from walking to his own death. Arguing that him dying made him a hero and if he walks away he’ll be a coward. I don’t get that logic.
- “I love you both so much”, oh, you mean this guy you haven’t seen in years, and this “daughter” you met that morning? Lady you crazy.
- We find Rooker’s character (Damon) was hired by someone to investigate the island. Who paid him? Moving on
- Melanie walks up to the magic rock, exposing to Sloane that she was behind the torture. So convenient that it only showed that part and not anything else that will expose the reality. Lucky.
- Gwen gets another fantasy. Because hers was “To change my biggest regret” and she’s now saying that the proposal wasn’t actually her biggest regret.
- She puts her wedding ring down on the table. Oh no, not the wedding ring she’s had in her possession for a few hours. Oh no, she’s sacrificing so much.
- She’s in a building which is on fire. But too late to actually stop the fire or save the person who died (Nick). So really the island really screwed her over for this.
- She sees Brax and JD, who don’t question that she knows their name.
- And then Patrick, who at least questions “do I know you”.
- Patrick is show as a coward for not rushing into a burning building to save someone, saying should wait for the fire department. Actually a fair point as they’re the ones with all the equipment. This doesn’t make him a coward, it makes him someone who is not an idiot. Why not just make him a firefighter who is too scared to go in?
- Brax shoots someone through a door. Very lucky he hit someone really.
- “sounds like you were a real Ms. Teen Asshole 2009 back then” That’s actual dialogue spoken by a human adult in this movie.
- The torture doctor is back, and is about to kill Sloane when Melanie stops him. Why? She wants Sloane dead, and having her killed by someone who will cause her immense pain is a great way to do it. Plus she’ll have plausible deniability.
- Damon sacrifices himself by bear-hugging the torture doctor off a cliff. Could have just pushed him I dunno.
- Brax’s fantasy gets invaded by Patricks. Patricks takes place in Venezuela, Brax’s doesn’t. Also there’s the time difference. If this film did a better job of tying them all together this could have been interesting, as it is it just seeems like they’re trying to think of an excuse to have them all meet.
- All the bad guys die, yay. You know, the bad guys who are so faceless and nothing that they’re literally wearing masks.
- Oh no, JD got shot to death. Ah well.
- Patricks dad sacrifices himself to save everyone. By which I mean, he shot at people who can’t die, so really he did nothing. Also, does that change his real death? If that took place in the past, then was that the past in reality? Although it is strange that his death is treated with more “emotion” than JD, you know, one of the main characters.
- Melanie provides the video proving that she saved Sloane. She could have just recorded that small bit, all the other “oh wow cool hologram” didn’t matter.
- Sloane phones her husband telling her she’s been kidnapped. “why should I believe you?”. Luckily we can see him on camera, again, how did the island put cameras in his place?
- She apologises to her husband for cheating on him, whilst also apologising to Melanie for bullying her. That’s how you can tell when an apology is genuine, when you can say it to two people at the same time.
- And now everybody is back together. Could have had a more natural way of doing it.
- “I put a kettle on for tea and left the burner on”. And that’s why you have electric kettles.
- “you were there, you did nothing” probably because he was a cop not a firefighter.
- Wait, this is Melanies fantasy, so why is she getting a rocket fired at her?
- “It’s not a satisfying revenge if your victims are oblivious”. Okay, so that’s why Melanie kept Sloane alive. Although she did really luck out that none of them died in the other dangerous situations. And don’t give me that “her fantasy meant that none of them could die before she met them” because JD died.
- They all split up, because obviously.
- Patrick gets dragged underwater and then just stands up immediately like nothing happened.
- Zombie JD head explode. He existed in this state for about 4 seconds. So added nothing.
- Sloane Clone appears. Somehow she looks worse than the Sloane who has spent the entire film being tortured, who looks weirdly clean considering what she’s been through.
- Patrick beats up a zombie version of his dad, whilst Gwen meets an undead Nick. So to summarise, you have all the characters except Melanie talking to dead characters/clones. Give me a little something different please.
- Oh, Gwen also meets her not-daughter stabbing her not-husband. Considering they didn’t exist in those forms UNTIL the island, I can’t imagine this has the emotional impact you think it does. I mean, does she have nobody else in her life?
- That’s it! That’s the issue. None of these characters feel like they exist outside of this film. Do they have jobs? What’s their social life like? We don’t know. We know almost nothing about these people outside of what is relevant to the film.
- The Patrick one could have provided real emotion. He kills his zombie dad. Have him be in some form of emotional torment over this.
- Melanie stabs Patrick to not death. Revealing that she’s behind this whole thing. In a reveal that actually gets stupider the more you think about it. She still doesn’t explain how she knew Patrick was the cop who didn’t go in. I doubt they would have named him in the newspaper report.
- There is one good thing about this reveal, one truly brilliant and masterful thing that I am grateful for: it means the film is nearly over.
- Gwen is at the magic water place that reflects her fantasy. Somehow the water knows that Roarke is looking at it from far away and starts reflecting his fantasy that Julia (his assistant) is actually his wife. Not sure how it reflected his and only his considering he was standing the furthest away.
- So Roarkes fantasy is to get his wife back, but that keeps meaning she dies again and again from disease. This got to painful for him so now instead of courting her he keeps her as his assistant. I imagine having a woman you love and being unable to tell her, and have it so she doesn’t love you and yet still constantly sees you all the time, I imagine that would be more painful.
- It’s revealed that Sloane hasn’t had a fantasy yet, she’ll get one if she drinks the water. Melanie is a fucking idiot and thinks “so this woman I tortured and am about to kill gets a fantasy? I’ll let that happen, no way this will can wrong”
- Oh my gosh Sloanes fantasy involves Melanie dying. This is such a shock.
- “Fantasy Fucking Island” weird, as that’s exactly what I say when I talk about this film.
- The grenade comes out of the fountain so Patrick jumps on it to sacrifice himself. How did that grenade get thrown out of the fountain from underwater with enough force to break the surface? And all of them were near exit tunnels so they could have literally just walked out. His death is so needless.
- “what’s stopping us telling everybody?” “fantasies are like dreams, you rarely remember the details”. Really? Because if I had a dream involving mass murder, I would remember it. Also, how is the island going to explain the actual deaths that happened? Brax stays on the island so that JD can come back to life, how is JD going to explain that if he can’t actually remember? Plus I’m assuming they told people they were going on holiday. So how’s that conversation going to go? “So, how was the holiday?” “I cannot remember, but I know my brother didn’t come back. Nah don’t bother asking the company any details” Everytime this film closes a narrative door it opens up fifteen windows.
- Oh, Brax is nicknamed tattoo. I’m guessing that means something to people who watched the show, but considering the tonal difference, people who liked the show won’t like this, so who is it for?
- And now my favourite part of the movie, the ending.
Troubled Productions 