Tag: Fantasy Island

Drop (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A widow goes on a date with a man she met online. A date that gets ruined by her trauma and anxiety, plus she keeps getting phone messages that threaten to kill her son if she doesn’t poison her date.

I am a slight fan of Landon, but mainly when he works a distinct style; kickass female leads in genre-bending weirdness (Happy Death Day and its sequel, Freaky, etc). When he steps away from that? Well then, you get Paranormal Activity 5 and Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse. Drop could easily fall into either of the two; yes, it has a strong female lead, but it isn’t playing off a genre, so it was difficult to figure out which side of the Landon fence it would fall.

I’ll get this out of the way; it’s much closer in quality to Happy Death Day than it is to Scouts Guide. From a technical standpoint, it’s his best film yet. There are some incredible shots here, this is the most impressed I can remember being with his camera work; sometimes when it didn’t even need to be. He doesn’t NEED to transition between the bar and the table with a tracking shot; a simple cut between the two would have worked. But he DOES make the choice to use the more difficult shot, and it’s beautiful. The set design also allows some visuals that are stunning, but not in an overly showy way.

Sadly, that doesn’t make Drop his best film. You can tell a lot of effort has been put into closing off any potential loopholes or answering any questions you may have about the logic. Drop REALLY doesn’t want you to question its core premise, but it doesn’t do enough to get you to care about anything outside of that. It has the essence of a political thriller, but it feels kind of underdeveloped. The villain’s main motivation comes off a little weak, especially since he seems to have picked the worst possible method to fix his problem. It’s written by the pair who wrote Fantasy Island and Truth Or Dare, which I still count as two of the worst horror movies I’ve had the misfortune of watching. Drop is nowhere near as bad as those two films, but the issues I had with them do linger here, too. The ambition is beyond its talent, trying so hard to be clever that it comes off as kind of stupid, and some character choices aren’t logical. There’s nothing inherently terrible about Drop. Nothing that will annoy you or offend you, but there are a lot of small issues with it, and eventually, they do build up.

Thankfully, Drop has something wonderful in its box of tricks: the cast. Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar make incredible leads. Separately, they’re very good performers. But it’s when they share the screen that magic happens. You really buy them as a nervous couple on a date; they could lead a rom-com together easily. The background cast is fun too (especially Violett Beane), never overshadowing the leads, but providing enough uniqueness that you do notice them, so if they were revealed as the mastermind behind the scheme, you wouldn’t be sitting there like “Who’s that?”. I’d have liked to have seen more work done on the writing of those characters, more motivational possibilities for some of them, and more doubt placed in our heads about some of them.

So, the reveal itself? It’s good, not great. If you ignore the “That’s literally the worst way you could have done this” questions, then it does make sense, and it’s easy to see how it was pulled off. However, there’s something deeply unsatisfying about how the reveal is set up. Just an offhand comment that no professional serving staff would make, followed by a lucky guess. It’s nowhere near as bad as the last Scream movie, but it’s also not one that makes you want to see the film again and watch it again with that reveal in mind.

In summary, it’s a very cute relationship movie that then breaks out into a thriller, and it does 75% of that VERY well.

Imaginary (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A horror story about an imaginary friend/bear. I’m not putting more detail into this than the scriptwriter did.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I am not perfect and I do sometimes make mistakes. My mistake here was assuming Imaginary was good and that I should see it. That’s not to say it’s terrible, it’s just incredibly mundane. A huge issue is a lack of identity. Imaginary is as confused about its identity as I am when I enter a new relationship with someone who has interests I don’t know about but I suddenly find myself being a big fan of.

It’s not a film, it’s a mix tape of other creative releases: The black-eyed fake family from Coraline is one. The Never Ever (the dream world) reminds me of Among The Sleep in terms of visuals. Then there’s the fact the villain is an interdimensional reality-bending being who’s capable of driving people mad, usually focuses on children, and whose real form looks like a giant spider, which is basically It. You don’t come out of this wanting to see it again, you come out of it wanting to see the better films it reminded you of, and It; Chapter Two.

There’s only one time where this horror tribute act works; when it hints that it happens in the same universe as Nightmare on Elm Street. That would explain a lot of things which occur, as well as help close up some holes. That, and only that, is a reference to another horror movie that actually enhances the lore that it’s trying to create.

So whilst it is basically a mix tape, it is a very well-curated one. Jeff Wadlow is a competent director, he’s less good at picking good scripts though, being responsible for three of the harshest reviewed films on this site: Truth Or Dare, Bloodshot, and Fantasy Island. Two of those were so notably bad, I liveblogged them, if you want to read my brain break, look here and here. Imaginary isn’t as bad as those, but it is nowhere near good enough to redeem it in my eyes.

Visually it’s nowhere near where it needs to be. There’s also a TERRIBLE edit. A character expresses joy that they were correct. You know, the “arms spread out, shouting out loudly” kind of joy. So she’s shouting in elation, arms spread out in euphoria, us watching it all from above. The camera then IMMEDIATELY cuts to her eye level and she’s standing normally. That’s just lazy.

He’s not helped by how dull the script is. A lot of the moments don’t land. It wastes the potential of an evil imaginary friend, to the point where there are times when that feels more like the background than the main plot. It’s not just the plot not mattering, there are specific scenes which waste so much potential. For example; there’s a section where the characters are attempting to enter the Never Ever. To open the door the characters need to feel pain. Physical pain isn’t enough so one of the characters delivers a “brutal” speech to her stepdaughter, harming her daughter for having to hear it, and herself for having to say it. That’s a genuinely good idea, but Colombo (by which I mean: there’s just one problem): It’s not brutal enough. It’s not a sentence you can imagine breaking anybody. It’s incredibly tame.

The tameness is a constant issue. The predictable heel turn from a side character leads to a motive rant about how they want to do something (I stopped paying attention, I was that bored). It seems hollow and a bit stupid. She’s then killed off-screen. So you don’t even get the catharsis of seeing a horrible character suffer.

The performers are all fine though. Pyper Braun is hella talented for someone so young, reminding me of Milly Shapiro. Taegen Burns is also pretty good, coming off as an alternate version of Sarah Hyland. DeWanda Rise is talented enough to lead a much better film than this. The other characters are severely underwritten, completely wasting some potential horror fodder, some of them are basically crying out to be killed, yet instead they just walk off and never appear again, probably having a wank, or a salad, or wanking into a salad.

Yup, that’s how I’m ending it.

X (2022)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: A group of people try to film a porn movie at a cabin belonging to an old couple, who strongly oppose the idea and decide to show their thoughts on the matter by writing a strongly worded letter to the local council. No wait, they murder them.

If you are thinking of watching this, go see it at the cinema. Not because it’s particularly great and you need to watch it immediately, but because the title means it’s going to be a bitch to find on a streaming site.

Let’s get one thing out of the way; this is not for everybody. It’s heavily focused on sex and violence, so unless you’re comfortable with both of those things, you won’t like this. It doesn’t shy away from the violence, and it doesn’t shy away from the sex. The whole thing feels slightly grubby, which is something that works in its favour. This isn’t a modern film, it’s a 70’s throwback in terms of style. It does work a lot of the time, and Ti West is a talented enough director that you never forget the time period that it’s set in. Now, as anybody who read my review of Censor knows, I love my throwback films. Especially when it comes to horror. And I don’t shy away from films about sex and killing people (I mean, one of those things is my favourite thing to do on weekends). I also like films about film-making, and am not afraid to see them going weird, as seen in Black Bear). So in some ways, this film was designed for me, yet I’m not that fond of it.

Part of that is because of how it sometimes utilises the throwback style in terms of film-making. The gimmick of “it’s edited like a 70s film” actually kind of gets in the way sometimes. There are far-away shots that don’t really tell us anything, and moments where it cuts to something for a second and then cuts back. It’s jarring, but not in a “horror movie making me feel unsettled” way, but in a way “this was edited manually and they botched it”. So it feels less like a throwback love letter to a genre, and more, just incredibly dated.

My main issue though? The same issue I have with a lot of modern horror films. The same issue I had with The Gallows, Unfriended, Don’t Breathe, Escape Room 2, Fantasy Island: I don’t like the characters. They’re annoying, selfish, not that likeable. So when they die, you’re not sad, or emotionally affected at all. If anything, you’re relieved.

The only slightly sympathetic character is one of the killers. She has a tragic backstory and her motivations do kind of make sense, although it’s never clarified exactly why that drives her to murder. She doesn’t get as much focus as the other characters though. The film spends so much time developing doomed characters, and not the location. At one point one of the characters finds the rotting corpses of a naked man in the basement, and someone else finds (presumably) his car in the lake (in a delightful shout-out to Psycho). Those things are glossed over really quickly. Was that person the only one? Or do they have a long history of this? The film comes close to answering this. One of the characters escaped the couple, and overheard them talking about throwing a body in the river. The actual ending of this is in the trailer, one of the cops finding a camera, “what’s on there?” “probably some fucked up horror movie”, END!

So, is she the reason the police are there? If so, why aren’t they draining the lake? If not, then why are they there? There are no houses nearby for people to have overheard the commotion. Really, they’re there to bookend the story, but it’s done quite poorly. Just full-on ape the ending of Psycho and show the car being retrieved, and then news footage of the discovery of bodies, to let us know this wasn’t a one-time thing, they’ve been doing it for years. I mean, think of the shot that ends From Dusk Till Dawn, where the camera pulls out and you realise the bar is not only built on an Aztec temple, but there are hundreds of vehicles there, all of them belonging to drivers who didn’t survive previous nights there. It’s not talked about often but it’s one of my favourite ending shots because it provides a history to everything, it shows that this has happened a lot before, and we’re just lucky enough to see the ending of a story that’s been being told for years. It hints at hundreds of untold stories just like the one we witnessed, only with unhappier endings. As opposed to this, which ends with nothing of substance.

I think it tried substance, there’s a preacher being shown on the television throughout, and at the end, it’s revealed that the main character is his daughter, who ran away to star in porn. A reveal that changes………..absolutely nothing. It doesn’t change what we think of her, or the situation, or anybody else in the film. It adds absolutely nothing outside of irrelevant backstory. It might as well have ended with “And that house where all the murders happened? It used to be a slave ranch”. It’s like, “yeah, and? Who gives a shit, that’s not relevant. Stop padding your word count”.

None of this takes away from the unarguable talent of everybody involved. Mia Goth continues to usually be the best thing in every film she stars in. Jenna Ortega has a great “final girl” quality (as anybody who watched the new Scream can testify), Martin Henderson has a strange, slightly Matthew McConaughey-esque quality to his performance.

So in summary? Maybe see this, some of you will like this a lot more than I did, and some of you won’t. It just wasn’t for me.

My Own Personal Hell-oween: Day Three (Fantasy Island)

On By troubledproductionsIn My Own Personal Hell-oweenLeave a comment
  • 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.

2020 Awards

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

Worst Film

Babyteeth

A film that by all rights, I should have loved, instead I hated it with a passion. Part of that is probably just because I didn’t like the characters. But part of that also might be because it has a euthanasia sex scene.

Fantasy Island

The only film I paid to see at the cinema this year. But even if I got in using my trusty cineworld card, I would have been disappointed with this. A lot of the things made no sense. Character motivations were muddled, and it was a complete waste of the potentially exciting premise.

Brahms: The Boy 2

I’m assuming this is bad, I genuinely can’t remember anything from this movie. For all intents and purposes, it’s like I never watched it.

Unhinged

An ugly film with an ugly soul, seemingly directed at similar people.

“Winner”

Artemis Fowl

Fuck you, disney. Your desire to do a book series yet take out the one thing that made the series stand out is a ridiculously stupid idea. It would be like if the makers of Harry Potter didn’t want to put any magic in the films. This film was doomed from the moment they posted the casting notes. I don’t get how you can fuck up a property more than this unless it’s deliberate.

Most Disappointing

See the section about the worst? Yeah, but every single film from that list (with the exception Of Brahms: The Boy 2 Electric Boogaloo) there. All of them I had, well maybe not high, but I had hopes for them. I expected them to be fun, or in the case of Babyteeth to make me feel things. But added to that list are:

Harley Quinn

No I’m not putting the full title here. I really wanted this to be more fun, but for a lot of the time it felt restrained, like it was an 18 film cut down to a 15. It had bits of brilliance, there’s one set-piece in particular which is creative and a lot of fun to watch, I just wish the rest of the film was like it.

Run

Controversial choice, as I did really like this film. But this subject is “most disappointing”, and that, sadly, is the case for this. I went in with incredibly high expectations, I expected this to be a 10/10. I wanted this to be one of the best films I’ve ever seen, and it’s not, it’s just very, very, very good. So yeah, that’s on me.

The Witches

Again, that might be on me, in retrospect I should have realised beforehand that this would not be a good movie, based solely on the complete lack of advertising for it. I really, really wish this was better. I wanted to love this movie. I love the original, and I love Anne Hathaway. Plus I wanted it to be so unquestionably brilliant that racists wouldn’t be able to attack it “see, you change the leads to black people, and it ruins it”. Truth be told, they could have done more with the racial aspect and played it into the story, especially considering when and where the film was set.

Winner

Tenet

The film that was supposed to save cinema, and which had such bad sound design that it would have been better to watch it at home where I could have had subtitles. I’m starting to realise I don’t love Nolan films as much as it seems I should. Interstellar, Dunkirk, they all left me feeling emotionally hollow if I’m honest. They’re very well made, and I appreciate the undeniable genius of the craft that goes into them, but I have no love them. On a personal level, they mean nothing to me.

Best Music

1917

Glorious and epic. Just what a film like this needed.

Spree

If only for the SENSATIONAL use of “I Will Follow Him” over the end credits, will definitely use that in my own stuff.

Babyteeth

One of the few good things about this film. I’m not going to buy this film, or even watch it again. But if possible I would purchase the soundtrack. It created an aural soundscape that complimented the colour scheme. It was weirdly beautiful, and fantastic.

Winner

Bill And Ted Face The Music

OBVIOUSLY! The music is a big part of this, bigger than it has been in any of the previous two films. So if it didn’t work, the film wouldn’t have worked. The final scene with the song is a moment of pure beauty, and the music is a big part of that.

Best Moment

Sonic The Hedgehog – Closing Credits

Weird choice I know, and this won’t be the last time I mention a credits sequence in this section. But the closing credits are essentially the film told but in the style of the old sonic games (a.k.a, the only good ones). No reason for them to do that and nobody would have noticed if they didn’t, but they did, and it’s wonderful. It felt like the only part of the entire film made with love for the source material.

1917 – The Trench Run

Incredibly tense and wonderful. Weirdly enough, it seemed to be improved by a mistake. There’s a moment during this run where the actor stumbled and nearly fell over. It was kept in and it weirdly enhances the scene. It makes you realise that for all the chaos going on around him, he is essentially just a scared youngster. He’s not a badass super soldier, he’s human, fallible, and fucking terrified.

Vivarium – The Drive

There’s a short moment in this film where the couple drive to a house. That’s all it is, a couple driving to look at a new house whilst a song by The Specials plays. Yet the way it’s filmed means it’s one of the best things I’ve seen. Incredibly tense and creepy, a great example of how a director can change a written scene so the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Underwater – Opening Credits

Again, a weird choice. But the way these were done were almost perfect. They set the location up, gave us plot background, and let us know the tone of the movie, so by the time the actual film started you were not only informed of what was going on, but you were also in the right state of mind and knew exactly what film you were about to see. Other films have done this, obviously, but few have done it quite as masterfully as it was done here.

Winner

Parasite – Peach Fuzz

When the family put their plan into action to get the housekeeper fired. It has the pacing and style of a comedic heist movie. It’s interesting to watch, the performers absolutely nail every moment of it, and most of all, it’s fun and playful. A bit of lightness in the darkness of the rest of the movie. If you showed someone this with no context they might think it’s just a cheerful light comedy as opposed to the genre-defining genius it is.

Best Looking

Babyteeth

Considering this was one of the worst films I saw this year, it’s appearing a weirdly high number of times in positive awards.. That’s how good it looked, good enough for me to look past the annoyance I felt. The colour schemes, the saturation, it reminded me of Lady Bird in terms of visual style. It seemed like a throwback of some sorts, but not to a specific time in reality, but to a specific time in your life. Very strange, but very good.

Birds Of Prey

Not a great film, but it had a great look to it. Like being shot in the face with a cocaine paint gun.

Onward

It’s Pixar, their films always look good. They have a certain elastic reality to them so they look both real and fake at the same time. Also, the colours! OMG the colours. Watching this film is like eating a unicorn laced with LSD.

Parasite

The colours! Nah I’m just kidding, this is not about the colours, I’m not some kind of weird person with a child-like mind who looks at films like “ooo, look at the pretty colours”, nope, this is about the pretty shapes instead. The way the director constructed each shot and used the straight lines visible in modern architecture to highlight the class divisions between the characters is masterful.

Winner

1917

This would be there based solely on a single shot. The shot of the town at night, the way shadows and light were used is a showcase for how great cinema can be sometimes. As it is, the rest of the film looks great too.

Best Character

Birds Of Prey – Huntress

Part of that is due to how Mary Elizabeth-Winstead plays her. A superhero lacking confidence and who is slightly socially awkward due to how they know they are supposed to behave. I would definitely watch a solo film by her. I really wanted more from her in this. Maybe if there’s a sequel it will be more focused on her.

JoJo Rabbit – JoJo

Brilliantly played, and brilliantly written. Yes, he’s a nazi, but he’s not fuelled by hate, more by ignorance. He has a definite innocence to him, Difficult to do, if you make him too innocent he comes off as stupid, if you make him too knowledgeable, he’ll come off as, well, like a nazi.

The Invisible Man – Cecilia

Obviously, for the reasons listed in the best performer, oh no, I’ve spoiled that section now. Ah well, I’ll live.

Winner

Onward – Ian and Barley. 

I put them together as they function as a pair. Without the relationship between the two, the film would be a lot worse. It’s essentially a family love story. It goes through the same story beats, just without the kiss at the end obviously.

Best Performance

An American Pickle – Seth Rogen

Anybody who plays two roles convincingly in the same film is doing a good job. Especially when you can always tell which character is on screen all the time. He carries both of them differently enough that even when they’re not speaking, and are in the same clothes, you know exactly which one is which. That’s not that easy to do unless you resort to extreme physical performances which can be distracting. The differences here are different enough for you to pick out, but subtle enough that you can’t define them.

JoJo Rabbit – Roman Griffin Davis

He’s 12, and this was his debut. How the hell did he manage this? I assumed he was one of those stage-school kids who’s been acting his whole life due to being related to someone in the industry. For him to come in and do THIS well shows he’s either got a hell of a future in acting, or a hell of a drug problem in his mid 20s. Either way, big things are coming.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm – Maria Bakalova

Another great newcomer. and something even more surprising considering it’s not her native language. Not just that, but she’s anchoring the film alongside someone who is an expert in this field, and she more than holds her own.

Winner

The Invisible Man – Elisabeth Moss

She has strength, but is fragile. Kind of like a flower made of iron. A lot of that is due to how well the character is, so I’ll go into that in that section. But the way Moss plays her is perfect. She needed to play her as someone who has gone through severe trauma and is still suffering mentally from the damage done to her which restricts her ability to live a normal life, yet also strong enough that you know she has the mental strength to do what needs to be done. If Moss played her too far towards either side it would have been ruined as she would have either come off too weak, or so strong that you don’t believe she’s still suffering. It’s a REALLY difficult line to walk, and she not just confidently walks it, she’s doing fucking cartwheels.

Best Film

1917

January was a great time for cinema, saw so many good films in that month (including JoJo Rabbit, which you’ll be hearing more of), but this was the first film that was simply stunning from a technical view.  Not included as the best because I’ve only seen it at the cinema, I’m not entirely sure whether it will also work on a small screen or whether you’ll lose something.

JoJo Rabbit

A film with this subject has to be REALLY good or it will be deemed a failure. It has the potential to offend so many people that the slightest flaw will cause the general public to circle around it like sharks circling around handbags at a disco, or food. Trust me, this is superb, one of the funniest and sweetest films I’ve seen all year. The rest of 2020 may have been bad, but at least it gave me this piece of brilliance.

Onward

Not a lot of love for this film, and I don’t get why. Even by Pixar’s incredibly high standards, it’s still really good. The voices are well-suited to it, and the story is emotionally satisfying. It deserves it’s place among Pixar’s greatest, and it disappoints me that people don’t seem to love it as much as I do.

The Invisible Man

A real surprise. I expected it to be kind of cheap and schlocky. Like it would not be great, but would be entertaining and fun. I was very wrong, this is not a fun watch, and it’s not cheap. This is a script that you felt the writer HAD to get out of them. It has the air of a passion project for everybody involved. The best part? It didn’t NEED to be this good. It didn’t need to have this much care to make money. It could have been made cheaply and still made money. But the fact that they spent enough money to get this film made, the fact that the script is THIS good, the fact that it has power and emotion to it, THAT’S why I love this film. A film about an invisible man has no right to be as well-crafted as this is.

The Personal History Of David Copperfield

A late entry, but deserves it’s place. This is the best of British film-making, showing the best writing, the best actors, and the best locations. The whole film is basically a showreel for British cinema. Despite watching it at home, I felt like I was watching it at the cinema. It just sucked me in completely until I forgot that I was just sitting in bed watching it while eating pringles.

Winner

Parasite

Incredibly haunting. Been almost a year since I saw it and I’m still not entirely sure I’m over the ending. This is one of those films that sticks with you, the kind of film where after seeing it, you want to have hour-long discussions in the pub afterwards. It’s annoying that soon after this we were banned from going outside, because I wanted to go out onto the streets and tell everybody to go see this film.

2020 In Film Day One (The Awful)

On By troubledproductionsIn Year round upLeave a comment

This was meant to be posted earlier but I caught COVID so got delayed. And yes, I will be using that as an excuse for everything. “why have you sat about eating chocolate all day?” “COVID”. “Why haven’t you been productive?” “COVID”. “Why did you genetically engineer ducks so they had knives for feet, then try to invade Luxembourg?” “Funny innit? And COVID”

These are the worst of the worst, films I can comfortably say you should avoid. The ones I hate so much that even these short recaps frustrate me. There are two here I think people might disagree with, at least one was highly rated by quite a view people. But again, these are all personal opinions, so fuck it. Eugh, at least after this things can get better.

Artemis Fowl

It’s a good thing I don’t write these immediately after seeing the film. If I did it for this then this section would just be “No. No No. Noooooooooooooo. No.” This could have been good, as it is, it is a film made for nobody. People who aren’t familiar with the books will dislike it because it’s a bad movie, and people who like the books will HATE it due to the changes made. In the original book, Artemis Fowl is kind of a sociopathic genius. In this, he surfs. He’s in trouble at school, but we’re not entirely sure why. He’s not an evil genius, he’s just a kid. It also destroys a lot of the relationships between characters. The relationship between Holly and Root is changed completely due to Root being a woman now, so we don’t have that “you’re the first female here, I put you to a higher standard as you will be used a scapegoat if you fail” relationship. Butler is known by his first name so you don’t have that moment where he whispers his first name to Artemis as he dies. This film inspires nothing but hatred. I know a few people who love the books, I’ve yet to hear a single possible good thing about this.

Original review here

+There’s a chance someone might read the books from this. I doubt it, but there’s a chance.

-What does the thing they’re searching for actually do?

Worst moment: Butler does a twirl. That will mean nothing to those who haven’t read the books but will infuriate those who have.

Babyteeth

Quite a few people liked this, but to me it just sat wrong. The characters weren’t likeable, and didn’t even have a glimmer of humanity yet we were supposed to buy them as a good couple. For this “girl falls for bad boy” film we need to see a reason for her to like him. Yet all he does is steal her shit, break into her house, and kiss other people in front of her. I don’t just not like him, I actively dislike him. And he never gets any better throughout the film, he just continues being a prick. I dislike a lot of films, but this is one of the few films where I actively felt like a worst person for having watched it.

Original review here

+The colours and music are superb. 

-You know everything else I said about this film? Yeah, that.

Worst moment: Three words: Euthanasia Sex Scene.

Bloodshot

The trailer ruined this film. It gave away the key plot point (that he was being manipulated), but that didn’t happen in the film until much later than you’d think. So you can skip most of the film if I’m being honest. That lack of thought and care can be seen throughout the film. There are logical inconsistencies throughout, and some of the background characters are just there to exist, they’re not fleshed out at all. 

+The scene with the flour (although for that to be good, you have to ignore that flour is flammable)

-The lack of thought that went into the script

Worst moment: The trailer. Impossible to enjoy this film when the trailer ruins the plot.

Brahms: The Boy 2

The only saving grace of this film is that it is so forgettable that it’s hard to insult it. I can’t pinpoint specific scenes or moments to tear apart and dissect. I can’t critique a performance or a directorial moment. I’ve got literally nothing. If you were to ask me questions about this film I don’t think I’ll be able to tell you anything. I’m not even sure I can tell you the title to be honest. 

Original review here

+Not as long as some movies

-It gave me NOTHING to work with

Worst moment: The retcon of the first movie. 

Downhill

I like everyone involved in this film, so I should have loved it. It just….it does not work. I feel maybe Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus’s comedic styles don’t work together, they’re incompatible and so when they try to lead a film it just comes off kind of ugly and disjointed. It’s a good idea, a remake of a french film that I think I should watch. But it seems like it’s meant more for an awkward character-based comedy, rather than the “ohuh” kind of comedy this goes for. Maybe Steve Coogan would have worked better? Hard to tell. All I can say is that you probably should avoid this.

Original review here

+Some funny bits

-How small it feels. It feels like a TV episode, not a movie.

Worst moment: None really. There are no peaks and valleys from which to judge it, it’s almost all valleys

Fantasy Island

This looked interesting. I almost expected it to be akin to W.W.Jacobs “The Monkey’s Paw”. A short story about a monkey’s paw (OMG that’s why it’s called that) that grants wishes but with horrific consequences. It’s a tale (or tail, if you want to make a monkey pun) that has inspired episodes of both The Twilight Zone and The Simpsons. It’s an iconic short story that would be perfect for a full-length horror film. They didn’t do that though. It’s nothing like The Monkey’s Paw, and is instead like a big pile of monkey crap. This should have been great, it should have been clever and scary, instead it’s neither. It also features possibly one of the dumbest twists I’ve ever seen. With this, and Truth Or Dare, I think Lucy Hale is becoming a red flag for dumb blumhouse horror movies.

Original review here

+More horror movies should take place on tropical islands. Allows very unique sets.

-The wasted potential.

Worst moment: I’m tempted to say the twist ending. But really the moment where someone asks for a second wish and gets it granted because “plot reasons”. Without her first wish the film has even less emotional impact than normal. Yet without her second wish it would be impossible for the plot to develop. So the script needed both to happen as it wrote itself into a corner. 

Spree

I never brought into this movie. At no point was I sold, outside of the concept. An uber driver/streamer who livestreams as he kills should be a lot of fun. It’s not. I think part of it is due to the character. He comes off as a whiny little bitch. Incredibly annoying to the point where I don’t want him to succeed. And some of the people he kills are also awful racist and other youtubers. So it’s just pathetic people killing horrible people. And the kills aren’t even that imaginative. It could have been an interesting study into how people can be so desperate for fame that it can drive them to do horrible things. That’s a story that’s been told before, but can be very compelling when done right as it’s not done too often. As it is, the film is just “internet bad”, whilst being aimed at people who watch youtubers. It’s insulting to the audience, it’s insulting towards the culture, and it’s insulting to the people involved that they had to work on this.

Original review here

+Good idea.

-The youtube-style editing of constant close-ups.

Worst moment: When he watches clips of a stand-up comedian. We just see punchlines, we don’t see the setups. So we actually don’t know whether she’s good or not, we’re just taking the films word for it. 

The New Mutants

I’m hoping that Morbius will finally give us a mainstream comic book movie with darkness and fear. Maybe my expectations were wrong and I was expecting something it was never meant to be. But then again, even without that, there are still a lot of flaws with this film. Woefully inconsistent characterisation (especially when it comes Anya Taylor-Joys character), CGI that should not be this bad in a film this big, and incredibly unsubtle symbolism. The X-men series seems determined to keep being an embarrassment and every time you think it can’t continue being bad, it proves you wrong. If the series ended with Logan it would have been great, but it’s not just that they continued, but that the films after that are so bad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as bad as Dark Phoenix. But that’s like saying “well at least the shit I did in my pants isn’t liquid”.

Original review here

+The central romance REALLY works. Even when the characters are just sitting near each other, you can sense the sexual chemistry between them.

-A sad end to the franchise

Worst moment: The narration, it happens multiple times yet doesn’t really add anything. 

Unhinged

This film had an ugly soul. It adds nothing and just seems like someone working through a mid-life crisis. It’s not a film but a series of scenes. Stuff happens but it very rarely matters what order as even after killing people in broad daylight, that doesn’t seem to increase the presence of police. The reaction to it has been even worse, with people sympathising with Russell Crowe’s character in this, despite the character being as despicable as his band was. But this film kind of plays into that. In terms of how the camera treats him, it doesn’t show him as a horror movie villain, it almost films him like the hero in a western. This isn’t helped by the moral of the story seeming to be “let people walk over you, if you stand up for yourself the people you love will be killed and it will be your fault”

Original review here

+Neat idea.

-Very stop start. This would have been improved if it was one long journey of chaos and destruction (sort of like Mad Max)

Worst moment: A long-ish scene that takes place at a restaurant. This occurs AFTER he’s run someone over and killed them, and after he’s burnt his ex-wives house down. Still no police turn up though

Fantasy Island (2020)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

I was actually excited about this. The idea of a group of people getting what they wish for but it leading to their destruction is perfect for a horror movie. Think about it, since there’s really no limits you get to showcase some incredible set-pieces full of imagination. You can use the characters wishes to display who they are as people. Plus the whole “be careful what you wish for” allows for some creative scripting as well, the idea of your dreams being cursed or not up to what you expected. That’s definitely not the case. The script is formulaic, as is the direction and performances. I’m mainly annoyed by two things, two major issues I had with the film:

  1. The horror wasn’t linked to the dreams.
  2. The ending.

I’ll go into them in further depth. The first one: the way the wishes end up causing deaths is not really linked to the wishes themselves, there’s no sense of clever Twilight Zone/Black Mirror karma going back to get you kind of thing. I’ll go through them here:

Melanie

The wish

She wants to torture someone she went to school with.

How it goes wrong

It turns out it’s not a hologram and she is actually torturing her. I’m going to go into this specific moment in more detail later on. It then gets darker as she breaks the woman free and they end up getting chased by the torturer. So it just becomes a standard slasher film.

What would have made sense

Simple; have Melanie kill her but then realise that revenge doesn’t fix everything and she’s haunted by the memory of what she did. When she tries to sleep at night all she can think of is what she did.

Fantasy-Island-First-Trailer-e1573493063804

JD And Brax

The wish

“having it all” Basically a massive party at a big house

How it goes wrong

The house used to belong to drug dealers who come to the house to kill everyone

What would have made sense

This could have been the most interesting. All they needed to do was show the toll that lifestyle takes. Basically have them trapped in a never-ending party, forever. No sleep, no rest, no escape. Every time they go to leave the building they’re transported back in, every time they sit down they get forced to join a conga line. Show lots of asshole strangers there who refuse to leave the party.

Gwen

The wish

To accept a marriage proposal she rejected years ago.

How it goes wrong

Okay this is where the film gets weird. She gets exactly what she wanted but realises that her new life with her now-husband and daughter doesn’t actually belong to her and she has memories which aren’t hers. Interesting concept for a horror movie, right? This was done magnificently in Happy Death Day 2 U, in this it lasts a few minutes and then she changes her mind and asks to go back to a hotel fire she caused. Now she’s there again she changes the past by………she doesn’t. The fire still happens. It’s very important to the plot though as she sees everybody else from the island (minus Melanie) there on the night of the fire. So really this only happens for plot reasons.

What would have made sense

Have you seen The Butterfly Effect? Make it that. Show how her decision would have impacted her life; have it mean she failed in her career etc. Basically, have her first wish matter.

Patrick

The wish

To be in the army like his dad.

How it goes wrong

The army think he’s pretending to be a soldier and hold him hostage. This section actually provided the strongest moments of the film, he’s transported to the past when his dad was alive and meets him. There are some great emotional moments where his dad realises what’s happened and they have a great reunion and talk about how his dad died saving his troop. Patrick ends up disappointed when his dad goes to leave as he doesn’t want to go on the next mission because (as Patrick told him) it leads to his death. “but you dying saved your men, that’s why I thought you were a hero, you have to go do it” is essentially Patricks argument. An argument which makes no sense, the only reason he died is because he walks into an ambush he wasn’t prepared for, he’s prepared now, so can tell his men to avoid the ambush. His dad ends up dying anyway when they walk into the house where the aforementioned party is going on (in the present, and no they don’t mention the time discrepancies, the closest you get to it is “oooo magic island water”).

What would have made sense

Keep the “transported back in time to see his dad” part, that part works. But change it so it is his dad’s final mission, and he didn’t actually die saving his men in an ambush. He was part of a top-secret mission to attack something non-human; so a demon, a monster etc. Basically, turn it into a monster war movie (similar to Predator). Ordinarily, I would have gone with “show how his dad was not really a hero and instead killed lots of innocent people”, but the emotional moment of the film is the only part that worked, so it needs to stay.

fantasy-island-Michael-Peña-e1543879921471
Now is as good a time as any to mention the wasted talent in this movie

There you go, it’s fixed. Now what you have is more like an anthology film, with each section having a different tone, with different scares, albeit ones which merge together well. Now onto the ending. The ending twist was that the whole thing was actually Melanie’s wish, and she wanted them all to die because she blames them for her not-boyfriend dying in a fire; Patrick because he didn’t rush in and save them, JD and Brax because they were friends with him and didn’t check he had left the room before they left the hotel, and Gwen because she started the fire. This would have worked if we didn’t see Melanie early on act really confused by the fact the powers of the island were real and she didn’t realise the woman she was torturing wasn’t a hologram. But if she was behind it all, then she knew all the time what was actually happening. So why was she pretending? She was alone in the room so the only people who were watching her were the audience. It was like the ending was written by somebody who hadn’t read the rest of the script. It makes ZERO sense and completely kills the small amount of goodwill I had towards this film. It wasn’t even needed, just play the film straight and let it scare people, not everything needs a twist. If you must have a twist, make it a different way. Cut out the fire sub-plot completely. Yes, if you had them all die and this was hell it would have been obvious, but it would have made sense.

So in response; avoid this movie. I can see 2020 having worse films than this, but I can’t imagine I’m going to see one that wastes its potential as most as this. It’s truly awful, not even worth a netflix watch.