“Fantasy Island” is a horror update of the classic 1970s television series that completely falls flat in every direction due to its uninteresting plot, poorly written characters and lack of any real scares in its overly-long runtime.
The film has an interesting premise of taking an older television series narrative and adding some horror elements, but it never really takes advantage of this. The Jeff Wadlow directed film follows five contest winners who are given the chance to each experience one personal fantasy on an island operated by the mysterious Mr. Roarke, played by Michael Pena.
The film simply doesn’t work because nearly all of the characters are not very interesting and there isn’t one good performance in the entire film. “Fantasy Island” plays as a horror anthology where nothing besides for a subplot with Maggie Q as Gwen, who is given a second chance to accept a proposal from an old boyfriend and have the life she always wanted. Otherwise, the film goes into a lot of derivative material where young people wish for various weird yet uninteresting fantasies. Melanie, played by Lucy Hale, asks to enact revenge on a childhood bully while two stepbrothers (Ryan Hansen and Jimmy O Yang) wish to party like millionaires and are sent to a mansion with models on the property. The last subplot follows police officer Patrick, played by Austin Stockwell, wishes to have the chance to serve in the military as his father did in the past.
None of these plotlines work because there is not one suspenseful moment in the film and the performances are truly lacking. Hale, Stockwell, Hansen and O Yang are all either underplaying or overplaying their characters to annoying degrees. It is not all their fault because the film’s script is truly without any form of good writing even though it is trying to be funny, suspenseful and self aware of the television series
The only good performances come from Maggie Q and a surprise appearance by Michael Rooker, but they are not able to salvage the badly written material written for the film. Pena certainly tries as Mr. Roarke, but he is completely miscast and is given a rather convenient subplot that doesn’t add anything to the plot until the very end.
Even the film’s attempts at comedy fail to work because it causes a weird shift in tone that goes from horror to dramatic to comedic in matter of minutes. Furthermore, while most of the film is predictable, “Fantasy Island” does attempt to surprise the audience with some of the most ridiculous plot twists I’ve seen in a horror film in a while.The film tries to explain the fantasies using an ancient tomb and the explanation doesn’t work because the subplot comes out of nowhere and only brings more questions into the otherwise bland and unoriginal story.
On the other hand, “Fantasy Island” does have some pretty interesting sets and a fairly intriguing set up that simply goes downhill rather quickly especially towards the end.
By the time the film goes into its final twist, it becomes so ridiculous that it is impossible to take seriously and made me question the events that were clearly overexplained throughout the rest of the film. Overall, “Fantasy Island” is a horror film full of potential that completely falls flat due to its uninteresting characters, lazy writing and lack of true scares that could attempt to justify the films near two hour runtime. For me, “Fantasy Island” receives a rating of two and a half out of 10.