User Reviews

Island of the Dead is not on the list of the worst movies ever made, as it's too innocuous to be offensively bad. However, I can honestly recall few films which have bored me as much.

A millionaire (Malcolm McDowell), a couple of cops and three convicts are trapped on Hart Island, where deadly insects are spreading a disease. Every time a character dies we see him gesturing excessively, usually from afar, as he is attacked by insects. After a couple of seconds he gets sick, then dies and quickly decomposes. Everyone else worriedly contemplates the aftermath. Repeat.

A slow build-up is usually a sound approach in horror movies, but when things move slowly there must be SOMETHING to capture the viewers' interest - a compelling premise, luscious visuals, crisp writing, strong performances, an impending sense of dread. Island of the Dead has nothing of this.

Just flies. And people gesturing excessively.

Again.

And again.

Worth mentioning is a surreal sequence filmed in slow-motion, with an absurdly out of place "Yo-ho! Yo-ho!" song as the main characters pose for the camera; a bizarrely kitsch, creatively ugly note in a mire of tedium.

2/10

*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.....

Island of the Dead is set on 'Hart Island' which is situated just of the coast of New York where unclaimed & unidentified bodies are buried, ex cop Melissa O'Keefe (Talisa Soto) who now works missing persons is trying to track someone down & reckon they might be buried on Hart Island so she decides to go over there. However she's picked a busy day for it as unscrupulous property developer Rupert King (Malcolm McDowell) plans to redevelop the island & build lots of apartments. He sends his man Rodger (Paul Hopkins) to take soil samples but he ends up being attacked by flies/bees/wasps or what ever they are & he ends up dead. The flies/bees/wasps then attack everyone else, wow, you can almost feel the excitement...

Written & directed by Tim Southam I thought Island of the Dead was total complete & utter crap, to be blunt. The script is terrible, for a start there isn't one single reasonable explanation for these killer files/bees/wasps, not one. Thy are just there & that's it, they also seem to be intelligent a they can actually distinguish between people although it begs the question if all they wanted to do was kill the bad guy & they let the heroes go free at the end why did they kill some of the good guys to start with? Anyway, one things for sure they are more intelligent than the script, a lot more intelligent. Then there's the highly annoying character's, Soto's missing person detective just sort of walks around a bit & has a disinterested look on her face while there's plenty of clichés here as well like the ex-cons, the greedy businessman who gets his comeuppance & the good hearted cop, please give me a break. There is one laughable scene when someone wants to give his dead friend a burial even though there's a swarm of killer flies/bees/wasps buzzing around outside & he actually intends to dig the hole & put the body in it as well! When all said & done though what kills this film stone dead is the fact that it provides zero entertainment, I cannot think of one single positive aspect to this film, it's incredibly slow & boring, it's predictable & it even tries to have a moral message about the homeless & missing people which just feels so heavy handed & out of place in such a rotten film. I hate everything about this film, it's as simple & straight forward as that.

Director Southam does nothing to make the film watchable, there's some highly annoying rap music & lots of irritating camera technique's which just look terrible & annoy more than impress. I'm not sure whether the things which buzz, fly & sting are flies/bees or wasps as they are never shown in close-up, all we get is a big black cloud when they attack & lots of buzzing noises. There are lots of maggots but not much in the way of gore.

Technically Island of the Dead is below average, the effects don't even stretch to showing the killer flies/bees/wasps, the entire thing looks like it was set in an overcast field & as such is extremely drab & dull to look at. The acting was awful & I cannot believe an actor such as Malcolm McDowell needs money badly enough to appear in a piece of crap such as this, was it really worth it Malcolm? Well, was it?

Island of the Dead is crap, there's nothing else to say really. I can't imagine anyone getting anything like entertainment out of this total waste of time, definitely one to avoid.

The only thing interesting about this film was Hart Island's history. This is an island which contains the bodies of nearly one million destitute people, and the best idea they can come up with is killer flies and meal worms? This island's history is ripe for horror exploitation, and they chose killer flies.

Forty five minutes and half way into this film nothing had happened and I was still hoping this movie was going to be about some zombies or monsters, or at least some ghosts. I got flies, and not in a good way like the X-Files episode from the first season.

Then there's the actions of the characters. The first guy that gets attacked by the fies doesn't even run. He just stands there flailing around in slow motion, only it's not slow motion he's just moving slowly. Then when the guy dies in the office the inmate just has to bury the guy when the building is still full of flies? There also just happens to be a gun in an unlocked desk drawer where prison inmates are roaming freely. The boat captain places two big wads of chew in his mouth and doesn't realize it's giant meal worms and not chew until he goes for the third wad?

Also, never mind explaining where these flies came from or how they even managed to make it back to the mainland.

Worst movie ever.

This is the biggest waste of money I have ever spent. Not to mention the title is misleading. Yeah I'm pretty sure that it sounds like a zombie movie and I thought so too and it wasn't. But that's beyond the point of how bad this is! Even the back of the movie the information seems kind of promising but it isn't! Poorly directed, poorly acted, and as Armake21 would say generally not interesting in the slightest. And some of the concepts are just ridiculous. As far as story goes, basically a man that has killed many people and buried them on this island. On this same island he decides to make city for poor people and people on the streets and what naught. Well to make a long story short basically flies are killing everybody and will leave it at that...I'm done with this...

(Spoiler?) For a minute, actually for about twenty-or-thirty-minutes, I thought I had lucked onto a straight-to-video horror gem. The opening titles told an intriguing, supposedly true, tale of an island in the New York harbor where countless thousands of the city's unidentified and indigent dead have been buried for decades. Cool. The opening was sufficiently eerie and atmospheric. I liked the cinematography, the music, and the setting. Piles of plain, plywood coffins in the morgue awaiting shipment to the island. Scary. Open mass graves on the sandy island. So far so good. The main characters were established quickly and cleanly. Talisa Soto was well-suited for the role of the compassionate missing persons detective. Bruce Ramsay was good as the innocent prisoner stuck on burial detail. The filmmakers even spent some money to get a "name," Malcolm McDowell, to play the Trump-style developer intent on developing the island. They had all the pieces in place for a fun movie except a monster. What do the filmmakers give us? Swarms of flies. That's right. Tens of thousands of corpses on the island and they give us murderous, vaguely supernatural flies. The flies, somehow, some way, seem to realize that McDowell is going to develop the island and they single him out for destruction. (The flies also kill a few other people, probably because they knew the film would be too short if they went straight for McDowell.) These are smart flies. In fact, they're probably so smart that had they written the script, they would have given the audience what it expected: Zombies. Alfred Hitchcock used to say, and I paraphrase, the stronger the villain, the stronger the movie. You do the math.

Yes, I'm a sucker for zombie movies. I bought this thinking it was a zombie movie with Mos Def and Mc Dowell, two people I thought I would never see in a zombie movie. Looks like I was right. They could have at least tried to make it suspenseful. If you need to give it a try just remember to rest your fast forward finger up first. Its going to have a workout. Here is an idea, a giant granddaddy fly whose buzzing blocks cell phone transmissions. Put the sexy chick in some beat up outfit armed with a blow torch ala Aliens, or even better, a backpack sized can of Raid rigged up for use in a way not authorized by the makers. (A Raid Bomb!) My point is, there are ways to make movies like this better, They could have dumped one of those quickly forgotten actors to pay for the cheap rubber effects I mentioned. Hey, before it explodes she could say "Fly away, Mother*%@*&$!" I'll stop know, I'm making myself sick.

Tim Southam's Island of the Dead is shot dead serious with a minor few humorous touches, lensed in a wintry blue / gray color scheme, removing as much rays of sunshine and light as possible, seemingly more focused on some sort of depressing message regarding the "disposal" of the undesirables, on Hart's Island, off the coast of New York City, a veritable "place for the dead", a "Potter's Field" where the paupers and unnamed are buried away from civilization. The tone and musical accompaniment are just as drab as the look, and the film's mood compliments cop Talisa Soto's attitude and her job..to put a name to missing persons since she herself was left on a street corner, abandoned by her mother. Malcolm McDowell is a millionaire, Rupert King, the mind and money behind the developmental project of "Hope City", a community for the poor and less fortunate who can contribute to society..or that's what it appears to be. There's actually something far more sinister behind his motives(..hinted at later but not quite elaborated on to full detail, dealing with genetic experiments). Along with some short-term cons helping bury dead in wooden boxes, Matos(Bruce Ramsay), Neely(Kent McQuaid), and Robbie J(Mos Def), & King and his slimy associate Mckloe(Paul Hopkins), Melissa O'Keefe(Soto)will head for Hart's Island on ferry in the hopes of putting a name to her missing person's report. King and Mackloe are on the island for business purposes. What the group are not expecting is a major attack from predatory houseflies whose bite sets off an infectious disease that causes immediate skin and bodily harm, resulting in those bit bursting with maggots.

McDowell doesn't have to stretch in his role as a loathsome, self-absorbed businessman with ulterior motives, and Soto remains with a sulk. Mos Def provided some well needed laughs as he takes jabs at Neely, an obvious addict on the mend, with various tattoos and piercing. Ramsay's Matos is a clean-cut con proclaiming his innocence to O'Keefe, very insistent on how he was framed by police. Tyrone Benskin is Dwight Truman, the security in charge of the prisoners working detail on the island.

Houseflies are not exactly the most menacing threat against humankind, but there's some effectively icky make-up work, showing how the body externally reacts to the disease..plus bodies riddled with maggots always seems to get a properly skin-crawling reaction. Southam uses a lot of point-of-view camera work in regards to the flies themselves charging towards potential victims. We also see them in swarms(..mostly during the night)forming in the sky. I found the idea behind the swarm actually singling out their victims, as if having a motive behind their activities(..specifically, in regards to Rupert King)rather preposterous and silly. Southam insists on cementing his movie with a gloomy atmosphere, and it's hard to take it seriously when you are dealing with hostile flies whose bite somehow infect humans with a disease. In regards to O'Keefe, an indelible image that reoccurs is these kids playing jump rope on a street corner providing the movie with an ever present theme on abandonment that motivates her character in every way. Great setting of the isolated and lonely island is never quite utilized as it could've been which is a shame.

"Island of the Dead" is a thoroughly disappointing and barely worthwhile creature feature.

**SPOILERS**

Trying to gather case evidence, Sgt. Melissa O'Keefe, (Talisa Soto) heads out to Hart Island, as a graveyard kept there for unclaimed bodies might help her case. While there, she finds that billionaire industrialist Rupert King, (Malcolm McDowell) is also on the island as he begins to turn it into a brand new area for helping the underprivileged in society. While both are out finishing up their actions, they manage to stumble upon a massive swarm of flies living on the island that are infecting them all with a deadly virus that soon has a swarm erupting from within them as well, making most of their escape attempts impossible. Finally getting an idea on how to stop the ever-growing swarm, they put it into action in order to get off the island alive.

The Good News: There's a few things to this one that keeps it going. One of the bigger issues is that there's a couple of actually entertaining attack scenes that are quite well-done, mostly the main attack sequence on the bunker at the end. While not all that graphic, the site of thousands upon thousands of insects buzzing around the complex and their frantic attempts at trying to break through the glass leaves a lot of rather fine points to the sequence, making their eventual break-in all the more fun when it occurs, as well as their escape idea that actually works really well. There's also another good attack scene earlier on, as a set-up, that makes for some really enjoyable times when the swarm emerges over the tree-line in the distance and really puts it into gear following that, from the foot chase through the undergrowth and the attack on the jeep which is a lot of fun. There's a rather cool sequence as well where the swarm attacks a boat while attempting rescue, where the only thing heard is the buzzing followed by the never-ending blaring of the horn, indicating the worst right in front of everyone that is somewhat enjoyable. The only other part that works here is the initial discovery of the dead bodies, where their deformed and rotting bodies suddenly appearing out of nowhere followed by the look make quite an impact. Otherwise, this one isn't all that great.

The Bad News: There was a couple problems with this one. One of the biggest ones is the fact that this one is just so slow-going in the first hour, as it focuses way too much time on the useless subplots that don't even feature into the film all that much. It's nearly an hour into this before there's even one attack, because the first part of the film is consumed by sequences detailing it's two main subplots, the search for the missing child and what the building plans for the site include. The first one has a somewhat important factor and is a little more excusable, but the fact that it's mostly just a never-ending series of scenes of her wandering around the bunker looking over everything or pointless, irritating banter between the workers about her or the task at hand really makes those scenes somewhat intolerable the longer they go on. The second one about the building plans is a novel idea, but the fact that this soon becomes the primary focus is what drives this down, since it usually devolves into pointless bickering between the two or his noticeably frustration at having to be around them, and the cliché of it aside, doesn't really provide any sort way to make the film interesting. These scenes are just utterly boring and quite uninteresting, are just utterly dull and provide nothing for the film at all, despite their potential and makes for some really hard times trying to get into the film from the beginning. Also quite problematic is the fact that there's just no real blood or gore in this one, despite it being a creature feature. Those more accustomed to more violent fare from the genre will get almost nothing in here, as it's bloodless deaths to begin with, edited so as to be completely unseen in the current state or just not there, and then coupled with the fact that there's several stumble-upon-the-bodies scenes to be found is where it gets even worse, not having anything at all to do this with and make for an all-around disappointing area for this. The last flaw in the film is the complete lack of explanation for what the flies are doing in here, as there's nothing to say about them. It completely skips over what they were originally, nothing is mentioned about why they're going on the attack, or what the cause was, and we don't even get an explanation for why they lay eggs inside victims only to have them burst out later, if that is indeed what is happening since it doesn't make it clear that's what happening. There's a couple other minor flaws here, but these are the most noticeable and damaging ones.

The Final Verdict: With only a few things actually worthwhile about this one and a slew of problems, this one is easily a massive let-down. Really only worthwhile for those that like their horror films dry with a touch of drama to the proceedings, while those that are more into other types should heed caution.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence

If you can get past the fact that this movie is S.L.O.W and there's NO action, (and if you can watch it for free on Amazon Prime like I did) you might not mind it.

Tries to be kind of noveau artsy with the wind swept high building views of New York City and the melancholic pseudo flashbacks of Talisa Soto's character, but it's out of place.

There's just not any depth to this movie to warrant that kind of creativity.

But, for some reason, I just didn't mind this film... probably because I didn't expect much to begin with.

Go in knowing what you're in for and you might find some appreciation for it.

I just watched this thing on Flix. I won't recap what others have said on plot, just my reactions. To paraphrase Ed Wood (who seems like Cecil B. DeMill compared to this movie) "There's been a movie made - and someone's responsible!" I don't know if this really contains a spoiler or not, but if you make all the way through the film waiting for the 'good part' or 'the explanation' you will be sorely disappointed. The only thing decent about the film is the acting - all the primaries make you believe they think they are in a serious movie. If you like long, tedious and meaningless shots of skyscrapers and kids skipping rope edited in willy-nilly, then grab your popcorn and settle in. I guess this was supposed to give it some sort of artsy quality but it just bores you to tears.