THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
If I hear a movie is not good, I try not to take that opinion too strong because I want to believe my opinion would be different. But after seeing what was a very bad movie, I would than reply "I couldn't agree to more" to those who warned me. One of the best examples is 2020's Fantasy Island.
PLOT
Based on the iconic ABC television series, the film follows multiple people who go to the titular location, a resort where fantasies are said to come true. Mr. Roarke, the island's proprietor, explains that the guests will have one fantasy each to fulfill their wishes. Melanie Cole (Lucy Hale) wishes revenge on a childhood bully, Patrick (Austin Stowell) wishes to enlist in the military to honor his deceased father, and Gwen (Maggie Q) wants to accept a marriage proposal she rejected years prior, while two step brothers, JD (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O Yang) wish to 'having it all', resulting in a rave. The island lives up to its terms as Melanie saves her bully Sloane (Portia Doubleday) from being tortured by a masked surgeon. They escape from the room she was held captive in and the surgeon is stopped by a private investigator named Damon (Michael Rooker). Damon explains that when he first arrived to investigate the island, his own wish got him trapped. He also reveals that there is a cave where the fantasies are created by spring water under a glowing rock. When the surgeon returns, he chases the girls but Damon makes his sacrifice by tackling him off a cliff. Patrick lives his fantasy of joining the military but meets his dead father, meaning that he is living the day he's supposed to die. JD and Brax's party comes to an end when being chased by the mansion's owner Kalashov (Kim Coates). Gwen lives the life she never had as the following morning, she wakes up with a five year old daughter. Not feeling satisfied with the wish, she requests for it to be changed. She is taken to the night she accidentally started a fire that killed her neighbor Nick (Evan Evagora). She tries to save him but fails and she is pulled from the fantasy by Roarke's personal assistant Julia (Parisa Fitz-Henley). The fantasies intertwine when Patrick and his father save Brax and JD from from the cartel crew. Not without sacrifice, Patrick's father takes a bullet for his son to escape the island while JD is shot in the crossfire. When everyone returns to the resort, Roarke reveals that they are all part of someone else's fantasy. They believe that this is an act of revenge for Nick because they all had a connection to him: Gwen started the fire, JD and Brax were his roommates, and Patrick who was a cop at the time, chose not to enter the blaze and attempt to save him. They all try to get to a plane Damon had sent but it is quickly shot down. This results to go to the cave and destroy the rock to end the fantasy. When it was originally believed that Roarke and Julia were Nick's parents who wanted revenge, but that turns out not to be true. Julia died long ago and now she is Roarke's personal fantasy where he gets to see her everyday, as long as he watches over the island and fulfill everyone else's wishes. The revenge fantasy was wished by Melanie the whole time because she was supposed go on a date with him before he died. When the fire happened, she blamed everyone for it. Before she could have her wish come true, Sloane instinctively drinks the rock's spring water and wishes for Melanie to be together to be with Nick. It comes true as a zombie version of him emerges and pulls her into the water. She throws a grenade at the others before drowning but Patrick jumps in front of it to save them. With the fantasy complete, Roarke finally decides to let them go. However, Brax chooses to stay behind to fulfill his last wish to let JD live. As the revived JD leaves with Sloane and Gwen, Brax becomes Roarke's new personal assistant, under an old nickname 'Tattoo'.
THOUGHTS
Now based on the premise alone, I truly assumed I would enjoy this alone but it was not the case at all. Even without watching the series, I feel like Jeff Wadlow gave something that was so unfaithful and unoriginal it didn't look like he was trying. I again have to say that the concept sounds good but the execution is terrible. Everytime there is good momentum, it quickly disappears. And because of that, I got so bored of what I was seeing. I don't know why Jason Blum continues to produce films like this when he's produced better ones like Get Out or BlacKkKlansman. I mean just when I thought Blumhouse Productions couldn't produce a film worse than Truth or Dare, we get this as well. Because the jump scares didn't frighten me at all, it was more of a lazy thriller than an investing horror movie. Knowing this, it blows my mind how Fox11 chose to produce a rebooted version of the show a year later. I regularly enjoy Bear McCreary's scores, but this one doesn't sound scary at all like it's supposed to be, I'm not sure what he was going for. I couldn't even connect a majority of these characters because no one from the cast made their performances believable in my eyes. The only one I really liked was Michael Pena as Mr Roarke. I thought the performance was good because he made it believable that he was conflicted, someone willing to have people go through nightmares of their own fantasies just to have his own. The only problem with him is that he doesn't have the immortal presence that people described Richard Montalban to have in the show. Because of such terrible writing from Wadlow, Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs, there were many things in the story that made no sense to me. I was getting invested when seeing Gwen live her do over fantasy but I quickly got pulled out of it when I noticed that the resort's staff played the serving staff. I mean if the island can make patrons, what is so hard making servers and cooks? Roarke may have said her fantasy is a challenge but if that really was the reason what was noticed, that should've been more clear. And why didn't it fulfill Melanie's fantasy when attacking Patrick? First the zombie ghouls are feeble, and then his zombie dad was a challenge. It's like the island or the wish is powerful when the plot demands it to be. I want to say it's a neat twist that Melanie plotted the revenge fantasy but how did she know Patrick was involved? It's not like she met him before and if someone told her that he/she saw him do nothing, that'd be exposition worth hearing. And I find it on dumb that she recorded herself torturing Sloane and sparing her afterwards because it makes the twist more problematic. If she doesn't want to get caught, don't record your crimes. And if she really wanted her dead, she should've pushed her off the cliff. I want to find it creepy how Roarke answers the closest phone but does he hang by all day and night? Sure he does talk to Gwen but a part of me feels like he used his cellphone in between. I also find it stupid how no one asked what he meant by saying the fantasy must be seen through the natural conclusion. Of course they're focused on enjoying themselves but they should try to know what they're in for. I even found it misplaced that he didn't talk about the island until midway with Gwen. That sounds like something he'd share in the beginning. What made things more confusing is how Sloane sees her fantasy in display with the rock, when she was never a participant. If that is even possible, why did the others fill out an application to Roarke? I get more lost the more I think about it. I understand that Damon wants to reveal that the island is dangerous but how does taking the water do anything? It sounds hard to believe it would work when far away from the island. This movie kind of makes things up as it goes because do they really want us to believe you can permanently change the past? I don't believe it when Gwen wants to save Nick because there's no proof that it can. If she really wanted the do over to be saving Nick, she should've made it clear to be taken before the fire. I don't exactly care about these characters because the performances weren't believable, but I am on Patrick's side. It'd be heroic to save someone from a fire but he was a cop, saving people from fires is what firefighters do. I like that Brax does sacrifice himself to stay so his brother could live, but how does he not show any grief when mentioning he didn't check on Nick? With an accident like that, he should've appeared more sad. And to top it off, Brax revealing to be Tattoo was the biggest rage quit I could ever have for a movie because you are obviously forcing an origin on how two characters met and it is highly unnecessary. In short, Fantasy Island is the film no one asked for and because of that, it becomes the kind of film that is thrill less. If you love the original series, good luck getting through this.
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