Having just watched Fantasy Island, a Blumhouse horror based on the '70s TV series, I have developed some pretty dark fantasies of my own involving director Jeff Wadlow, writers Jillian Jacobs and Christopher Roach, a heavy duty vice and a blow-torch.
For a while, I managed to have a reasonable time with the sheer cheesiness of the script, the diabolical acting, and the lame attempts at horror, but at 109 minutes, it's way too long for a trashy piece of B-movie schlock, and tedium soon takes hold.
The film sees a group of competition winners arriving on the titular island where their enigmatic host Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña) tells them that their deepest fantasies will become reality. This is true, but as time passes, their dreams become nightmares and it would appear that the guests are in fact part of someone else's fantasy - someone seeking revenge for past indiscretions.
Featuring a mad doctor with a stapled shut mouth, dead soldiers reliving a dangerous mission, a crazed private eye lurking in the undergrowth (Michael Rooker giving a career worst performance), masked armed drug dealers, a spot of Saw-like torture, and a wild pool party complete with big-breasted models and muscle-bound hunks, it might sound as though boredom wouldn't be an option. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, the convoluted post-twist final act dragging on for far too long with little in the way of logic but plenty of contrivances.
After much inane nonsense, and a particularly dumb denouement, the film closes with a dreadful 'tattoo' joke to make fans of the original TV series hate this cinematic turkey even more.
For a while, I managed to have a reasonable time with the sheer cheesiness of the script, the diabolical acting, and the lame attempts at horror, but at 109 minutes, it's way too long for a trashy piece of B-movie schlock, and tedium soon takes hold.
The film sees a group of competition winners arriving on the titular island where their enigmatic host Mr. Roarke (Michael Peña) tells them that their deepest fantasies will become reality. This is true, but as time passes, their dreams become nightmares and it would appear that the guests are in fact part of someone else's fantasy - someone seeking revenge for past indiscretions.
Featuring a mad doctor with a stapled shut mouth, dead soldiers reliving a dangerous mission, a crazed private eye lurking in the undergrowth (Michael Rooker giving a career worst performance), masked armed drug dealers, a spot of Saw-like torture, and a wild pool party complete with big-breasted models and muscle-bound hunks, it might sound as though boredom wouldn't be an option. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, the convoluted post-twist final act dragging on for far too long with little in the way of logic but plenty of contrivances.
After much inane nonsense, and a particularly dumb denouement, the film closes with a dreadful 'tattoo' joke to make fans of the original TV series hate this cinematic turkey even more.