j* movie reviews 2020

Fantasy Island (2020)

Blumhouse makes adventure-comedy now, and it is zany!

This isn't horror, okay. I know Blumhouse has a reputation for horror. I know this film has been marketed as horror, but it's not. I heard girls in the toilets afterwards say "It was so scary I couldn't eat my popcorn" but I disagree. I went thinking it was horror, but whilst watching I decided it was actually adventure-comedy. And I think a lot of the negative reviews you'll read are based on it being a disappointing horror movie. And it is getting slammed on Rotten Tomatoes, currently 10% critics and 49% audience like it.

Most similar films I can think of are Jumanji 2 or Dora: Lost City of Gold, and I suspect both of those have scarier moments. Try to imagine tv show Lost re-made by Looney Tunes with a touch of Scooby-Doo.

It is hilarious though. If you can let go of your preconceptions and just roll with it, it is a wild and hilarious ride. Nothing in the trailer helps to explain what this film is, I'm not even sure I understand what it is and I've watched it. But the three of us laughed and laughed and laughed. Sometimes we were laughing at bits that were clearly intended as comedy, sometimes it was because "wtf is happening now?!" If we were laughing *at it,* I feel that's what the film wanted. I think it is quite self-aware.

The basic trailer premise is correct, people go to an island to have fantasies fulfilled. Despite it being often mentioned, there's no sex-stuff. There are way more characters having complex whacky fantasies, and these sort of intersect and flashback and cross over. Rules keep changing. Michael Rooker appears and is an excellent kook. They have comedy frat-boy duo of Jimmy Yang & Ryan Hansen playing basically the same characters they've just played in Like A Boss. The sort of main character played by Lucy Hale is hilariously over the top and the more serious role of Maggie Q is strangely believable. They portray an interesting spectrum of human response to fantasy.

There's highjinks in jungles, in dungeons, beach-houses, caves, sandy coves, seaplanes and resorts. Weird black-oil mystery stuff. A sort of haunting. Sea snakes. Some doppelganging. There's always bloody gunshots going on somewhere. Or at least whenever they need to changeover.

I don't know if I could accurately recount the plot if I tried. I'm not sure if on balance it is really clever or ridiculously stupid. I got the feeling they just kept jamming all the keys, throwing plot-structure and reason to the wind. The result is such a roller-coastery wild-ride of funny nonsense. I have to say, whilst I think it is a sub-par horror, it is very entertaining. Just when you think you might have a grip on how Fantasy Island works, it throws another whacky curve ball and you're back to"wtf!?"

It's only a horror movie in the sense that a training bra is a bra; looks sort of similar but does nothing. Suitable as "my first horror film" perhaps. But it is such a liberated film, beholden to no-one and nothing but its own internal shits'n'giggles. And I found that worth watching.

J* gives it 4 stars.

Or about 2 stars as a horror.

PPS. IMDB says "Adventure, comedy, horror" and RottenTomatoes says "Comedy, science-fiction & Fantasy." It's only got an Australian M rating, and the USA has given it PG13. This is a very mild film.