Fantasy Island

Producer Jason Blum has made a name for himself by churning out low budget films that generally can turn a huge profit in a single weekend.  He mostly sticks to the horror and thriller genre, such as The Purge and Paranormal Activity movies, but he does occasionally venture outside his comfort zone. (He was behind that unspeakable Jem and the Holograms movie we got a few years ago.) He's not exactly keen on quality, but he does occasionally strike gold, such as when he backed the Oscar-winning Get Out.  And then there are the times when he comes up completely short, and I can't remember a time that can possibly compare to this big screen take on Fantasy Island.

The idea behind this film is to reboot the old TV show that ran during the 70s and early 80s as a schlocky horror film filled with zombies and people who have black ooze pouring out of their eyes.  As I type that sentence, I have to wonder, how did this project even sound appealing in the first place?  The original series featured Ricardo Montalban as the mysterious Mr. Roarke, who would welcome guests to his island (the guests were usually played by celebrities at the end of their careers), and would offer their wildest dreams to become reality.  The whole premise of the show was a "be careful what you wish for" concept, and was usually as corny as you might expect.  In updating the material, director Jeff Wadlow (2018's Truth or Dare, another Jason Blum-produced misfire) tries to give it the edge of a supernatural thriller, only he forgets to give it any thrills, frights, or reason for the audience to be involved in the first place.

The role of Mr. Roarke is filled here by Michael Peña, who seems as lost and confused here as he did the last time he appeared in a horrible movie reboot of an old TV show, 2017's miserable CHIPs.  If I were him, I would just start rejecting any and all scripts that cross my desk that are inspired by television.  As the film opens, he welcomes five new guests who have won a trip to his luxury resort of forbidden fantasies via a contest, and all arrive at once.  All the guests have some kind of secret desire, which they will get the chance to experience due to a mysterious supernatural force that runs throughout Roarke's island.  The guests include the timid Elena (Maggie Q), who rejected a marriage proposal from the man she loved years ago because she felt she didn't deserve happiness, a pair of "bros" named Bradley (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang) who want "the good life" of wealth and non-stop parties, a cop named Patrick (Austin Stowell) who longs to be a soldier so he can fight alongside his military father who died when he was young, and a young woman named Melanie (Lucy Hale) who can't get over her past of being bullied in high school, and wants revenge on the mean girl Sloane (Portia Doubleday) who tormented her.

Before they know it, all of them find themselves living their fantasies.  Elena gets to say yes to the proposal, and see how her life would turn out, Bradley and Brax get a mansion home filled with party models, Patrick finds himself in the jungle fighting alongside his father, and Melanie is issued a torture porn dungeon with Sloane strapped to a chair, along with an array of tools for which to extract her revenge.  Naturally, these fantasies all have to go wrong in some way, and lessons must be learned.  However, the way this movie handles everything is borderline inept.  Not only is this movie not the slightest bit scary at any moment, but it also just comes across as being very convoluted and crass, especially when we get the obligatory third act twist.  If the movie is horrible as a thriller, it's even worse when it tries to be a comedy and poke fun at itself, as not a single joke lands.  It doesn't help that not one character in this movie is likable or even interesting.

Fantasy Island is lazy and incoherent for most of its running time, and then just becomes a flat-out mess when it tries to tie the stories of the different guests together.  The whole thing reads like a first draft that was pushed before the cameras in order to meet a rushed deadline, which it probably was.  I understand that Blum's production company likes to make films on the cheap, but there's simply no excuse for what's on display here.  Even a low budget production company must have known that this script was not ready to shoot, and that it barely made a lick of sense.  There is just such a total lack of effort here that it seems almost criminal that a major studio like Columbia Pictures is asking audiences to pay money to watch it.

After the most recent remake of Black Christmas from a couple months ago and now this, I have to wonder if Jason Blum even stops and looks at the projects he greenlights.  His studio's take on The Invisible Man is due in a couple weeks.  I'm trying my best to remain optimistic, but when a production company puts out an effort like this, it's hard not to be skeptical.

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