Friday, October 1, 2021

31 Days of Horror 2021 Day 01 Fantasy Island (2020)

 

TITLE-Fantasy Island

SOURCE-Starz Channel Airing off the DVR

Back on Valentine's Day 2020 Blumhouse released their Fantasy Island film. Taking the old tv show and making it into a horror film was an idea I liked. We planned on going. We are both huge horror fans and have spent a few Valentines Days at the theater enjoying a new horror film. But something happened and we just never went to see it.

Skip ahead to 2021. I had been building up a nice selection of horror films I had never seen on the DVR. Remembering how much we wanted to see Fantasy Island when it was in theaters I popped some popcorn. Turned off the cell phones and sat down to watch it.

The cast ain't bad. Michael Pena I knew from stuff like The Shield and Eastbound and Down. He is good as Mr Roarke. Maggie Q,took me a few minutes to realize it was her,does well in her part as the older businesswoman. Then the only other member of the cast I knew was Lucy Hale. And that was just because she was the lead on CW's short lived Katy Keene series.

Like the old show,which I tried to watch each week as a kid,a handful of people arrive at the island by plane and are told their wildest fantasies will come true. For most of the main cast this is simple nice stuff. But Lucy Hale wants to torture the woman that bullied her back in school. And the film starts to take a very dark twist.

The FX work ain't bad. I wish more of it was practical work. But the CGI that is used looks decent. While none of the cast are big names they all did great. With Jimmy O. Yang being a stand out. Before this I had just seen him in bit parts in film and tv and he was decent. In this film he is the stand out.

I see that the film got bad reviews but made almost 7 times it's budget at the box office. Now I wouldn't saw Fantasy Island was an amazing film. But for mainstream horror it was pretty decent. Worth catching on say Netflix or Hulu.

Fantasy Island gets a C+