Blumhouse's Fantasy Island

Blumhouse's Fantasy Island (2020)

9% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 46 reviews)

Runtime: A long 110 minutes

Directed by: Jeff Wadlow

Starring: A bunch of actors, many of whom deserved better than this

From: Besides Blumhouse... Sony/Columbia

The night of Valentine's Day, I revisited the original My Bloody Valentine, which was good times. This... not so much: 

This was not a sweet, sweet fantasy.

The original television show, if I ever watched it, that would be in reruns and I would be toddler age so in essence, I would only know the basics such as the general idea, the cast and its famous catchphrase, which is heard in the movie. The trailer did now blow wind up my proverbial skirt but as this fit my schedule, I need to use the AMC A-List app more often, and the reviews I heard prepared me for something laughably bad, which this was. I've heard some compare this to Lost, a show I maybe saw 30 seconds of total. From hearsay, I am glad that was a show I invested zero time in.

Of course this would have worked better as something like a Netflix miniseries; the various stories presented here, I do understand why it was done as a movie instead of in separate episodes because of what they were going for. Unfortunately, in this case it did not work. This was obviously shot as an R and edited down to a PG-13, which prevented any of the kills from being any fun, for example. The various stories are WILDLY different in tone, so them cutting between them gave me whiplash, as there is serious drama involving regret over past choices, loathsome bros engaging in “humorous” debauchery, action, and a girl looking for revenge against a high school bully. Speaking of cutting, this is edited to death to make it a still long almost two hours long; this being longer than two hours would be more a nightmare than a fantasy. The dialogue... besides one of the worst and least realistic attempts I've ever heard at a character telling the audience what year a segment is set in, it too often explains way too much as if they have zero faith in the audience to figure out what is not complex material.

Then the second half of the movie happens, and this unravels w/ stupid plot twist after stupid plot twist, each dumber and more story-breaking than the last. The end result is an attempt at being clever but instead we get a story that is utterly baffling and devoid of logic, making me feel I wasted my time with this claptrap. Some of the actors do fare better than others... Maggie Q did the best with the material and it's always nice seeing Michael Rooker. But, on the flip side of the coin, the two actors who were the bros, they couldn't make them not likable in the least; they were pop culture spouting buffoons, obnoxious D-bags who the audience was supposed to like yet it was impossible to. Also, whether by design or accident, they came off as homosexual lovers instead of half-brothers.

In a tremendous example of “failing upwards” in Hollywood, the main people and even the same lead of the movie Truth or Dare also made this; I'll presume Truth or Dare is a funnier bad movie experience. They did film at a beautiful island in Fiji, but that is not enough to suggest that anyone ever see this. The audience (which was large), I think only some of them enjoyed this foolishness. One person I heard scoff a few times in the final act-an appropriate reaction-and another whispered what he thought would be a plot twist to their friend; it didn't happen, but it would have been better than the twists we actually got, which is of the blindsiding variety as they are barely hinted at beforehand, if at all.