Fan­ta­sy Island

There are but two rules on Fan­ta­sy Island, a trop­i­cal get­away where any­thing is pos­si­ble (with the excep­tion of recog­nis­ably human dia­logue). Each guest is per­mit­ted to enact a sce­nario of their choos­ing, the catch being that they must see it through to its con­clu­sion, no mat­ter how painful­ly they will learn to be care­ful what they wish for.

Hor­ror movies, of course, oper­ate under a much more exten­sive rule­book. In his big-screen remake of the long-run­ning TV series, Jeff Wad­low vio­lates sev­er­al of the genre’s major dic­tates, chiefly one per­tain­ing to the con­clud­ing twist that turns the film into some­thing of a who­dun­nit. The hand­ful of telegenic twen­tysome­things cart­ed to the island for the week­end of their dreams quick­ly realise that it’s more like a night­mare, and that they must fig­ure out who’s ful­fill­ing their own fan­ta­sy of tor­tur­ing the captives.

It’s hard­ly a spoil­er to reveal that the cul­prit hides among their ranks, though we’d have no way of know­ing that because the covert vil­lain inex­plic­a­bly main­tains their ruse even when depict­ed alone. It’s a low-lev­el form of nar­ra­tive cheat­ing, a tac­it lie about someone’s inno­cence in the guise of misdirection.

The lead-up assem­bles the lucky ​“con­test win­ners” and sends them off to play out their deep­est desires, with the action cross-cut­ting between what’re essen­tial­ly four excep­tion­al­ly plain episodes of the show. The orig­i­nal broad­casts indulged the odd­er side of the late ​’70s with colour­ful premis­es enact­ed by an unend­ing parade of big-name guest stars; each seg­ment of the film cuts an already thin cliché into quarters.

Melanie (Lucy Hale) seeks revenge on a girl­hood bul­ly and lands in a tor­ture-porn cham­ber that quick­ly exceeds her con­trol; Gwen (Mag­gie Q) gets a sec­ond chance to make the right deci­sion on a pro­pos­al she regrets turn­ing down; wannabe sol­dier Patrick (Austin Stow­ell) plays war with his vet­er­an hero dad­dy; step­broth­ers Brax and JD (Jim­my O Yang and Ryan Hansen) descend into unbri­dled hedo­nism, real­is­ing too late that they’re reap­ing the ben­e­fits of a hot­ly con­test­ed drug empire. The Bren­dan Fras­er-led remake of Bedaz­zled beat them to the punch on that last one 20 years ago.

If Wad­low and co-writ­ers Chris Roach and Jil­lian Jacobs can be said to have any­thing to say, it would be one of an array of plat­i­tudes not lim­it­ed to ​“hold­ing on to vengeance is unhealthy” and ​“don’t feel guilty about start­ing a fire if it was pure­ly an acci­dent.” The series struc­tured itself like a col­lec­tion of clever monkey’s paw short sto­ries, with a wal­lop of poet­ic irony wait­ing at the end.

No such luck this time around, as their four har­row­ing ordeals con­verge in a cli­max made of super­nat­ur­al mum­bo-jum­bo com­plete­ly out of joint with every­thing that’s pre­ced­ed it. The island’s enig­mat­ic keep­er (Michael Peña) and his pli­ant assis­tant (Parisa Fitz-Hen­ley) hold secrets, but as they are not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing secrets, they’re hard­ly worth know­ing at all.

In between glances at their watch, a view­er may find them­selves pon­der­ing why this motion pic­ture exists. It’s not as if a vast Fan­ta­sy Island fan­dom had been clam­our­ing for a washed-out, bas­tardi­s­a­tion of the TV ver­sion – and even if they had, the film would’ve alien­at­ed them by aban­don­ing all that made the show sing.

What’s left is a gener­ic exer­cise in stu­dio hor­ror with lit­tle to dis­tin­guish it beyond the prop­er nouns in which it wraps itself. That, and a tru­ly nox­ious tag that explains the ori­gin of once-and-future ser­vant Tattoo’s name. It is, to be fair, not quite as excru­ci­at­ing as when this hap­pened to Han Solo.