Bloomhouse's Fantasy Island (2020)

There is a great concept in the idea of Fantasy Island, perhaps why it keeps getting interpreted. Facing some otherworldly force that brings your fantasies to life only to deal with the fact those fantasies might not bring us what we want is a rich concept, expecially exploring the mythology of such a place. Is the force malevolent or benevolent? What is its origin? Anyways all of this would be interested, except this movie drops the ball and saps any of what could have been good about the concept.

Bloomhouse has built quite a reputation for themselves. While they have produced the amazing Get Out, The Gift, and Split as well as non-horror modern masterpieces like Blackkklansman and Whiplash, they also put out cheap horror schlock like Happy Death Day and The Purge movies. So on the hope that this concept could be played out more like Get Out and less like a Saw rip off, I went to see Bloomhouse's Fantasy Island (yes that's one of the official titles) an sadly the latter is more true.

"From the director of Truth of Dare" should have been a clue.

Fantasy Island takes the cheap route. It oversimplifies the concept with cliched fantasies and a cliched turn on those fantasies. Then when the "twist" is revealed, it goes full on camp. Most of the mythology of the island is nonsensical. Basically anything I had wanted from such a story is left out in favour of surface level story telling that is clumsy and rather boring. It leans into is Saw sensibilities which also feels cliched and takes away from the impact of the emotional resonance that could have existed otherwise.

I imagine what an "from the director of Get Out" Fantasy Island could have looked like. Why couldn't we have had that film?

Bloomhouse's Fantasy Island

Starring: Michael Peña, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Portia Doubleday, Jimmy O. Yang, Ryan Hansen, Michael Rooker

Director:  Jeff Wadlow

Writers: Chris Roach, Jillian Jacobs, Jeff Wadlow