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In my ongoing quest to see as many zombie movies as possible within my
lifetime, I purchased a copy of Island of the Dead at Target for
about six bucks. I assumed (safely but falsely) that any movie with
of the Dead in the title must have zombies in it. I was
wrong. Turns out this masturbatory masterpiece of a movie had
nothing to do with zombies, but it had everything to do with ummm....
Uhhh.... Well, ok, here's the story. Malcolm McDowell plays Rupert King (in his greatest role since Tank Girl), a multibillionaire who wants to build a town on Hart Island. Hart Island is an island in New York where they bury all the unidentified bodies. Anyway, Mr. King buys the island to build a town on. So, we have basically the Indian Burial Ground deal going on. There's also a few other characters, King's number 2 guy, a few prison inmates. One is played by Mos Def (who will be appearing in the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide movie as Ford Prefect), one has a bunch of cranial accessories, and one's innocent. There's also the nice guard. Finally there's our main character, whose name is easy to forget, but who is played by the same woman who played Princess Kitana in the Mortal Kombat movies. I'll just call her Kitana. She's a missing persons detective who's on the island to find the body of a girl so her family can have some closure. Since there aren't any zombies, they had to have some sort of plague or something. The writers opted for killer flies. So, now that the movie's pretty much set up, let's get going. There's a decent chance that it might be good. I mean, there's a variety of different characters facing off against what is essentially an invisible enemy. It has plenty of potential for being scary, creepy, and mysterious. Who are these flies? Where do they come from? What's their motivation? How do they select their victims? Why am I asking so many questions? Maybe I'm asking a bit much of this movie. Maybe not. I don't know. In any event, it was damn near impossible to pay attention to it. The direction was boring. The story was boring. The enemy was boring. The acting was boring. It was almost a style over substance deal, but without the style. It was just a bad movie. And not in a good way. |