I had about the same expectations for this as I did for Dolittle. Good news, this isn’t as bad as Dolittle, but that honestly isn’t saying much.
I only really decided to see Fantasy Island because the idea of an island that can grant your dream fantasy and then turn it against you sounded quite fascinating to me. I guess the other thing being that it’s based on an old television show and we all know that leads to some marvelous results. Cool idea but too bad this was made by the same team who brought us Truth or Dare, one of the most hilariously awful films I have ever seen. Unfortunately for Fantasy Island it’s neither intentionally nor unintentionally hilarious. It’s just boring.

I didn’t care about anyone, I forgot everyone’s names, it was just a series of boring scenes where I had no idea what they were going for. You had the main girl of Truth or Dare having the opportunity to get revenge on her childhood bully and it’s kind of disturbing and creepy. Meanwhile on the other side of the island you have two unfunny bros having the time of their lives at this nice house, with a pool, booze and beautiful women and it feels like a comedy with a dip of drama. The tone is all over the place if you add in the three other main characters who I’ve failed to mention.
It’s advertised as a horror movie but for a huge portion of the movie it isn’t. When the horror does show up there is absolutely no tension because they serve up the most predictable scares and the movie is aimed at teenagers which explains why the violence is so tame. This is also because of the terrible writing as everything is up in the air as to how this magic island works. Most of the stuff characters say are either them explaining their life stories over and over again or a really bad pun. The only thing I knew about the Fantasy Island show was ‘The Plane, The Plane!’ They say that twice in the movie and I cringed both times.
Most of the actors I have seen perform better in other movies, which sucks that they were wasted here. While for others I couldn’t tell if they were doing a good job because their characters were so poorly written. The most out of place actor is Michael Pena as the Dr Moreau of the island. This casting choice was even of concern to me before seeing it. From what I have seen Michael Pena has never been that great at playing a serious character which is why when he does he normally plays a supporting role. He’s a main here and appeared to be more bored than I was whilst watching this movie.
To be perfectly honest I was kind of into this film for a little while. Most of my problems with it stemmed from the worst plot twist I think I have seen. So much of this story is really predictable and the few twists it did have are so painfully obvious that I’m more shocked the movie is convinced that I haven’t figured it out yet. While this other twist I didn’t guess only because it comes out of nowhere and contradicts everything that came before it.

My best summary of Fantasy Island is it’s a lazy cheap cash grab. They could do better, but they don’t want to because that would take too long. This movie cost $7 mill which I think explains why the effects look so cheap and why the writing is so lazy and contrived. I saw a lot of people lined up for Sonic as I left the cinema so I recommend watching that over this. 1 to 2/10 and it gets the fail seal.
There is still that Q&A for the 200th to look forward to. I am looking for the most strange, fun and weird questions that would make for an entertaining post which you can leave in the comments. After this I think I might finally check out that Truth or Dare Directors Cut that’s currently on Netflix. See you all some other time and I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.