As with all review-caps, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for Fantasy Island. Consider yourself warned.
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In the grand Hollywood tradition of remaking/rebooting/re-imagining all of the classic TV shows from – well, from the dawn of television onward – it’s no surprise that Fantasy Island would be included. In fact, it’s only surprising that the show, which starred the late, amazing Ricardo Montalban and ran from 1977-1984, has taken this long to return to the screen as a feature. Those unfamiliar with the series (which I was a huge fan of as a kid – yes, I’m dating myself) – and even those who do remember it – may not know that the original pilot had a much darker tone than the rest of the series.
However, once it fell into its episodic rhythm, the show became much more like The Love Boat on an island. And if you aren’t familiar with either series, well, Google them. Or better yet, watch some of the old episodes on YouTube. But anyway, once I saw that Blumhouse was going to be producing this version I was psyched, because I think the premise of Fantasy Island with its original, dark tone, is a really cool idea to work with.
So the flick starts with something we’ve seen a thousand times in a thousand horror flicks – a pretty blonde being chased through the dark. She’s in a jungle-type environment and runs to a beautiful Victorian mansion that anyone who’s familiar with the old show will recognize. She runs inside and gets on the phone to call for help but all she gets is a man’s voice telling her he’ll take care of everything. After all, she’s a guest. Then, the thugs show up and haul her off to wherever.
Next, in the morning, just like the old show used to, a seaplane flies over grand ocean vistas to a gorgeous island somewhere in the Pacific. A pretty lady in white named Julia (Parisa Fitz-Henley) runs to alert the island’s host and caretaker, Mr. Roarke (the awesome Michael Peña), that the plane is coming. Now if you know the old show, it’s already weird that there’s no little person named Tattoo doing that – but more on that later.
Then, the lovely Julia welcomes the guests: there’s Melanie (Lucy Hale), a bratty Gen-Z’er who two-fists her complimentary cocktails and complains that there’s no cell service. Next, the beautiful but melancholy Gwen (the awesome Maggie Q) and an all-American good-looking cop Patrick (Austin Stowell).
Now, there’s unlikely brothers JD (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang), who apparently never outgrew the frat-boy lifestyle and attitude. Cocktails in hand, Mr. Roarke welcomes them all to Fantasy Island in a dead-on Montalban tone and flourish. So it seems all the guests are winners of a contest, and have been flown to the island to fulfill their fantasies. Roarke says there are only two conditions: only one fantasy per guest, and each fantasy must be followed through to its “natural conclusion.”
Everyone gets shown to their bungalows – Julia takes Gwen to her room, and all the while the skeptical Gwen keeps asking questions about the island and Mr. Roarke. Now, Julia will only answer with cryptic lines like, “Your life is about to change. I hope you’re ready.” There’s also obviously something off about Julia – confirmed when she leaves and after walking away, her nose starts bleeding. She’s creepy in the same way Get Out’s Georgina (Betty Gabriel) was, which is a foreboding and awesome sign. But more on her later.
So what’s everyone’s fantasy? Well, Melanie wants to get revenge on a high-school bully named Sloane (Portia Doubleday). Patrick, the son of a war hero but who’s never served himself, wants to play soldier. For JD and Brax it’s to “have it all.” And for Gwen, she wants a do-over of a moment she regrets. Mr. Roarke sends each guest off with a brief and vague explanation of what will happen – warning them that fantasies rarely play out as expected.
Next, Melanie’s instructed to take an elevator down to a “floor with no name,” and when she gets there she discovers a dungeon-like setup with all kinds of controls. Behind a wall of one-way glass, she finds bully Sloane gagged and strapped to a chair. Thinking it’s a hologram, Melanie starts playing around with the controls and gives Sloane a hefty electric shock. She’s surprised when it seems that it’s no hologram. It’s the real Sloane. Then a scary looking “Doctor” (Ian Roberts) enters the chamber with the obligatory tray of surgical-torture tools. Melanie puts a stop to it though, electrocuting the Doctor. Then, she breaks through the glass to rescue Sloane and the two escape into the jungle.
Meanwhile, Roarke drives Patrick to some random spot in the jungle and sends him on his way with nothing but a rucksack. It isn’t long before he’s captured by a group of soldiers who haul him off to their lieutenant – who just happens to be Patrick’s dead father. Each of them are totally creeped out by the other, especially since Patrick’s wearing his dad’s dog tags. But they decide to continue with their rescue mission and bring him along. Patrick keeps trying to warn his dad that he’s going to die in the process. And while all that’s going on, JD and Brax have been living their fantasy – hanging out in a huge house with a crazy, hip-hop video-type party going on. In addition, there’s supermodels, drugs and a dude doing jet-ski stunts in the pool.
Meanwhile, Mr. Roarke leads Gwen to a set of double doors, on the other side of which is her “do-over.” Now while all this has been going on, every one of the characters has been seeing flashes of this hideous, burnt man. Gwen is the only one who really seems to know that something’s immediately wrong. In addition, she’s the only one who hears the constant drip of this strange black water that’s puddling here and there. But she ignores it and walks into her fantasy – reliving the night her boyfriend proposed to her. Gwen immediately accepts the proposal instead of turning him down. She wakes up the next morning and finds that she’s been happily married for 5 years and has an adorable daughter.
However, as the fantasy plays on, her belief that she doesn’t deserve such happiness eats away at her. Gwen leaves her fantasy to go to Mr. Roarke and ask him to change it. Turns out the “do-over” she really wants is something else entirely: to save the life of someone who died. And it’s at this point that Mr. Roarke reveals his own past. When he and his wife first discovered the island and she died soon after, the island gave him his own fantasy – his wife back. The catch is that he has to stay there and “do the island’s bidding” in order to keep her. If you’ve guessed that spooky Julia is the wife, you win the big prize of being able to see a plot twist a mile away.
So it’s around this point that all of the guests’ fantasies start overlapping each other and of course, turning for the worse. JD and Brax’s house party gets rudely interrupted by a group of masked thugs (led by Kim Coates) who start shooting up the place and demanding money. Now, it turns out the rescue mission Patrick’s dad and his soldiers are on is rescuing the people at the same house. If that’s not enough, Gwen’s real do-over involves rescuing a neighbor named Nick Taylor (Evan Evagora) from a fire. Everyone is connected to said neighbor.
Confused yet? Yeah, I was too. Don’t worry, it gets worse. So basically what happens is that we find out that none of the characters acted to save poor Nick from an apartment fire that killed him. If you’ve guessed that he’s the phantom burnt guy they all keep seeing, you win more plot-device-spotting points. And in the middle of all this, the awesome but totally wasted Michael Rooker shows up as some random private investigator wandering around in the jungle. His purpose is apparently to uncover the odd goings-on at the island. That, and so everyone in the audience can go, “Oh, hey, cool, there’s Michael Rooker!”
Next, he leads Melanie and Sloane (who by now has learned of Melanie’s revenge fantasy and is none too pleased) to this cave where he says the source of the island’s dark magic comes from. It’s this huge, crystal stalactite-type thing suspended over a pool of the black water (and if you’re a child of the 70’s or 80’s, it might remind you a lot of the caves and Pylons from Land of the Lost). Oh, and it’s the black water that all the fantasy characters are made of, by the way. So when one of them “dies,” they dissolve like the Wicked Witch of the West, complete with black water spilling out of their black eyes. Which is, unfortunately, about as close to real horror as this flick gets.
I would go into more detail about all the third-act developments, but the whole thing gets so botched up, nonsensical and unnecessarily convoluted that it’s really not worth it. After several Scooby-Doo-type info dumps, we learn that Melanie’s the evil mastermind. See, she was Nick’s new girlfriend at the time. Being robbed of her potential new love, she sought her revenge on all those who had anything to do with Nick getting killed in the fire.
Oh, and along the way, both JD and Patrick (and Michael Rooker’s character too) end up dead. Mr. Roarke admits he’s doing wrong by his late wife by making her live and die over and over again and lets her go. Melanie gets her just desserts by getting pulled into the black water Friday the 13th-style by none other than her late boyfriend – the only other real bit of horror in the whole flick.
Then everybody gets back on the plane and goes back to their lives, lessons learned. Well, except for Brax, who makes a deal with the island to resurrect JD and send him back home alive and well. This is in exchange for Brax staying behind and helping Mr. Roarke tend to the island. He even adopts the name of a stupid prank he inked on his own chest – yes, he actually had the word “tattoo” tattooed on himself. Ha, ha. Get it? So it ends up actually being nicely set up for a franchise, but I doubt the flick’s going to do well enough to warrant any sequels.
Now, I’ll be honest and say my expectations for this flick were pretty low going in. I had hopes that it would embrace the darkness and go for full-on horror in its storytelling. But I wasn’t surprised that it ended up being what it was – sorta fun, but mostly disappointing and a huge missed opportunity. While I’d still say it’s a fun way to spend a couple of hours as long as you turn your brain off, it’s just a real shame that now this particular idea’s been ruined by another lame retelling.
Directed by: Jeff Wadlow
Written by: Jillian Jacobs, Christopher Roach, Jeff Wadlow
Release Date: Feb. 14, 2020
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 1 hr 50 min
Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures
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