Fear Island (2009)

I try to find something to say about most films, but with Fear Island, I have to warn you that this 'review' will be pretty short.It's hard to imagine a more 'average' film than this. I do like a daft 'slasher' flick as much as the next gore-hound, but this brought absolute zero to the genre.I know all slasher movies have had the bar raised in 1997 by Scream, but at least some try to be original.Fear Island is about a group of friends who go to stay on an island and mysteriously start getting picked off one by one. Hopefully, this won't spoil too much when I say that the film opens with one traumatised girl being found on said island by the authorities. The film then consists of her account of what happened to her friends to a police detective and criminal psychologist. I found that this kind of tells you most of what you need to know about the film. You never have to guess who will survive as you already know that from the start.Normally, you may at least get a few amusing/interesting/disgusting kills. Not here. There's hardly any gore and what little there is comes few and far between. I know that no one expects an Oscar-worthy performance in a teen slasher film, but, seriously, the killer might as well be hunting trees since the actors are so wooden (even 'Jinx' from Warehouse 13 can't elevate it at all). Then there's the most clichéd detective ever to be put on film who's in charge of the (meagre) investigation. He spends most of his time barking stilted dialogue at an unfeasibly attractive, intelligent and calm psychologist.Some film you can watch if you're bored. However, this is not even one of them. If you like slasher films and are in the mood to sit through one. My advice would be to put one of your own DVDs on. This one isn't worth the time.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/

**SPOILERS*** Brain twisting slasher flick that runs out of gas halfway through its story when you start to realize that the only survivor of a massacre on Fear Island is on the verge of being committed.The survivor Jenna, Hayfie Duff,was found wondering aimlessly around the deserted island with a bloody knife on her. Having no memory of what happened and even whom she is Jenna is interrogated by both local detective Amory, Martin Cummins, and police psychiatrist Dr. Jamie Chalice, Anne Marie DeLuise. Suspcted in the brutal murder of six collage students on the island as well as their pet dog Perrier Jenna's memory slowly starts to come back in a series of episodes or flashbacks where we as well as Det. Amory and Dr. Chalice start to make some sense of this tragedy. The only problem is that they have to take Jenna's word on what happened to the students since no one else is alive collaborate it!As the movie goes on or plods along that suddenly almost out of the blue a new element or character is added to it in the young girl Regina, Brenna O'Brien. It's Regina who turns out to be the key to what happened in the movie but as we soon find out she's been killed off before the film even started! It was Regina's death that set into motion the series of brutal murders on the island. But who committed them only Jenna in her subconscious mind knows. And as her memory starts to return she'll be able to identify who the killer is that's if the killer doesn't get to her first!***SPOILERS**** The big surprise is saved for the very end when Jenna's parents who were on a trip to Cambodia came to the hospital to visit their very disturbed and heavily medicated daughter. It's then that the whole truth came out to what Jenna knew about the string of killings as well as who she really is. But by then most of us watching had figured that all out making the big and unexpected "surprise ending" anti-climatic.

The other Duff sister gets her own slasher vehicle, a real dud with a twist you can see coming a mile away. A group of hot-looking college kids decide to yacht to a nice island retreat for some partying which turns sour really quickly when a killer, with a reason for his/her vengeance, ruins the festivities, murdering them one by one, leaving "clues" as to why each member is a victim, words in white paint, like INNOCENT and GUILTY. It all could be the result of a cruel sex prank played on an attractive but unpopular nobody in their school who went missing shortly afterward. The movie goes back and forth between a detective and psychologist questioning amnesia-stricken Hayley Duff and her reports (as they return to her supposedly in fragments told in jarring flashbacks) and the events that supposedly transpired during the death weekend on Fear Island. The movie pretty much casts doubt on Duff immediately because Haley isn't much of an actress who can play a tragic victim that convincingly or maybe it was the poor direction which never allows us to believe she is telling us the whole truth. I rarely believed much of anything the flashbacks were telling me and the psychologist, who seems to be on her side at first, while the detective is hard-nose-to-the-grindstone with her at the onset soon thinks she might be a victim instead of killer (which tells you how stupid his character is as I'm no detective and Duff practically has guilty stamped on her forehead due to her fishy, suspicious performance), denounces large pieces of her fractured testimony as not wholly matching the evidence recovered at the crime scene. Yet, this slasher film expects us to swallow the conclusion where the psychologist, who has reservations about Duff's innocence, actually accepts a drink from her before the parents are about to arrive, just proving that someone who is skilled at reading behavior doesn't seem so smart when it matters most. The scenes on the island are of the tiresome PG-13 variety, with characters right out of a I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel. None of the kill-scenes will leave you very overwhelmed..a rattlesnake bite to the chest is really as gory as it gets as most of the deaths are of the off-screen variety. Boring, with zero thrills, "Fear Island" will induce heavy snoring.

For anyone out there who can remember and recall with fondness the many exhilarating tales written by Enid Blyton about the famous five and their many exploits, such was my thinking when I sat down to watch this movie.My immediate thought was of course imagine if Enid had concocted The Famous Five Go Mad On Fear Island. alas such is not the case, but such is that feeling of familiarity that it never left me throughout this film's entire running time.The main headliner in the cast is of course Hayley Duff, and she acquits herself admirably throughout, although I did find myself extremely distracted by her dimpled chin! As for the rest of the cast they also carry themselves through the story with aplomb, decent acting is hard to find in movies of this nature.However that being said, my main concern was the film's narrative structure that really let itself down, I'm all for flashback in small doses, but dear lord, just when you find yourself settling into the story we get another flashback! I've never been one for spoilers, and you won't get any here, but if you find yourself watching this movie and your able to get to the ending, don't be surprised if you shake your head in disbelief and wonder why in hell the scriptwriter decided on a very familiar twist.In the name of fear!.....In the name of God!.....If you feel anyway inclined to watch a decent little whodunnit, skip this one and check out James Mangold's Identity, at least that movie can tell a decent story and definitely deliver a killer twist.This movie get 1 out of 10 and that's just for Hayley's dimpled chin.