*CONTAINS SPOILERS*
Vaguely passable at best, once this film is over you start asking wayyy too many questions and realize you've been duped.
The distributor obviously had no faith in Island Of The Dead. They resorted to deceptive packaging to get thrill seekers drawn in. Yes, there's a big fly on the cover art that in a way tells you what's in the film. However, the summary on the back mentions an island where New York City buries its unclaimed dead, and that makes you assume you are going to see a zombie film. It's apparent by the following sentence (with an awful typo in the word predators) that there is more deception: "...he soon becomes hunted by the ravenous predator's that lie buried beneath the earth." Zombies? No, FLIES instead, that from one bite can make you rot from just minutes to hours, depending on the need of the plot.
Since the flies attacked unpredictably, it seems odd that the people trapped on the island would just wander outside instead of staying in. It's mind-numbingly dumb in one scene where the one inmate (Bruce Ramsay) insists on burying a guy who just died and brought on a new batch of flies. Not only do they chance walking through a roomful of flies inexplicably in non-attack mode (and Talisa Soto makes a comment straight out of The Birds), they take the body all the way to a burial site and are not scared that they could be attacked. What you have minus scenes like this and the artsy but aggravating flashbacks to girls doing jump rope is an X-Files episode, amounting to about a 45 minute episode without commercials. Malcom McDowell's attempt to blow up a building was a poor excuse to get an explosion in the film as well.
So, at one point Soto says the flies "wanted Rupert" (McDowell). If that's the case, they had plenty of opportunities anywhere in the film to bite him.
The flies were supposed to be intelligent and could wreck phone lines and truck engines, but took them 90 minutes of killing others for no apparent reason before getting their man. We then are lead to believe all is well at the end, but no explanation to if the problem of the flies was taken care of. The film just leaves you dissatisfied and feeling the writers only had some basic ideas, padded it with filler, and figured most viewers wouldn't care as long as they got some gore and get them bobbin' their heads to the "phat" beats of a rap song.
The actors do an adequate job considering the limited material, but someone DOES need to coach Mos Def on how to act like he's being attacked by flies -- he looked like he was trying to "bust a move" instead. It would also have been nice to make the throwaway characters less obvious -- the guard and the inmate with the tackle box face were just too obvious in their fate.
I found it ironic that the death-rock inmate, with all his tattoos and piercings was such a squeamish guy. That might have been on purpose, but with all the gaping holes in the plot and the need to use the F-word to convey seriousness, it just all came off as silly.
I knew things were in trouble as soon as that rap song first appeared out of place in a scene. We are then subjected to it later on and again over the end credits. Worse yet, it's a clichéd rap song, complete with the word "yo" a zillion times and lots of scratching right out of Hip Hop 101 class. I haven't heard this much gratuitous rap since the dreadful THE FEAR (1995).
The filmmakers must have felt that by sprinkling in rap to distract, it would cover the lack of thrills.
If you see Island Of The Dead for free, then give it a look to pass the time.
Here's a good question: Does a city like New York still actually bury its unclaimed dead? I thought cremation would save groundspace and health hazards, unless they need the grounds to bury films like this one.....
Vaguely passable at best, once this film is over you start asking wayyy too many questions and realize you've been duped.
The distributor obviously had no faith in Island Of The Dead. They resorted to deceptive packaging to get thrill seekers drawn in. Yes, there's a big fly on the cover art that in a way tells you what's in the film. However, the summary on the back mentions an island where New York City buries its unclaimed dead, and that makes you assume you are going to see a zombie film. It's apparent by the following sentence (with an awful typo in the word predators) that there is more deception: "...he soon becomes hunted by the ravenous predator's that lie buried beneath the earth." Zombies? No, FLIES instead, that from one bite can make you rot from just minutes to hours, depending on the need of the plot.
Since the flies attacked unpredictably, it seems odd that the people trapped on the island would just wander outside instead of staying in. It's mind-numbingly dumb in one scene where the one inmate (Bruce Ramsay) insists on burying a guy who just died and brought on a new batch of flies. Not only do they chance walking through a roomful of flies inexplicably in non-attack mode (and Talisa Soto makes a comment straight out of The Birds), they take the body all the way to a burial site and are not scared that they could be attacked. What you have minus scenes like this and the artsy but aggravating flashbacks to girls doing jump rope is an X-Files episode, amounting to about a 45 minute episode without commercials. Malcom McDowell's attempt to blow up a building was a poor excuse to get an explosion in the film as well.
So, at one point Soto says the flies "wanted Rupert" (McDowell). If that's the case, they had plenty of opportunities anywhere in the film to bite him.
The flies were supposed to be intelligent and could wreck phone lines and truck engines, but took them 90 minutes of killing others for no apparent reason before getting their man. We then are lead to believe all is well at the end, but no explanation to if the problem of the flies was taken care of. The film just leaves you dissatisfied and feeling the writers only had some basic ideas, padded it with filler, and figured most viewers wouldn't care as long as they got some gore and get them bobbin' their heads to the "phat" beats of a rap song.
The actors do an adequate job considering the limited material, but someone DOES need to coach Mos Def on how to act like he's being attacked by flies -- he looked like he was trying to "bust a move" instead. It would also have been nice to make the throwaway characters less obvious -- the guard and the inmate with the tackle box face were just too obvious in their fate.
I found it ironic that the death-rock inmate, with all his tattoos and piercings was such a squeamish guy. That might have been on purpose, but with all the gaping holes in the plot and the need to use the F-word to convey seriousness, it just all came off as silly.
I knew things were in trouble as soon as that rap song first appeared out of place in a scene. We are then subjected to it later on and again over the end credits. Worse yet, it's a clichéd rap song, complete with the word "yo" a zillion times and lots of scratching right out of Hip Hop 101 class. I haven't heard this much gratuitous rap since the dreadful THE FEAR (1995).
The filmmakers must have felt that by sprinkling in rap to distract, it would cover the lack of thrills.
If you see Island Of The Dead for free, then give it a look to pass the time.
Here's a good question: Does a city like New York still actually bury its unclaimed dead? I thought cremation would save groundspace and health hazards, unless they need the grounds to bury films like this one.....