Fantasy Island (2020)

Thriller framework aside, Fantasy Island probably works best as a comedy. At least when it’s not trying to be one.

Suffice to say, this is all getting explained when scary things could actually be happening. My “FUN-tasy” throughout was that the credits would roll.

Blumhouse’s theatrical adaptation of the TV classic Fantasy Island never quite works as a horror film, a comedy, or a melodrama despite its attempts at being all three. It works marginally better as a mystery but by that point, you’re not as invested in the story’s outcome or its generic protagonists to muster much of a reaction.

If this new movie — referred to in some circles as Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island — were a pilot for a TV reboot, it would come off as overwrought and underwritten but still possibly on the right track for a revived anthology series. As a movie, those flaws are magnified to the size of the silver screen, and its contrivances and coincidences come off as even less convincing.

This is all interesting from a pro-am cinema semiotics perspective, but none of it is in the least bit scary. This, really, is what happens when you take all the wrong lessons out of film school.