Review of The Last Island

This is in certain ways a disturbing and potentially controversial film and I had expected to find more than one comment here. Stories about shipwrecked survivors on tropical islands tend to be presented either as romantic idylls (sea, sun and scantily clad young people, e.g. The Blue Lagoon) or as dystopics in which the island becomes a petri dish for the darkest aspects of the human psyche to seethe in (e.g. The Lord of the Flies). Sometimes man comes out on top as in the films Hell in the Pacific, or, more recently, Cast Away, that both deal with overcoming the odds and escaping the island prison, but all the actors in those films were men. Throw in a woman in the equation and everything changes.

The Last Island gives an unadulterated feminist take on the castaway motive in which the evil inherent in men gets the better of their desire to escape the island. This is a very interesting process to watch and not one you can remain neutral towards.