Review of Fantasy Island

Fantasy Island is a fun romp for people who don’t have to have it all

Fantasy Island is a cozy old sweater. The kind that you don’t let anyone else see you wear, and if you ever dared to pull at any of the many stray threads hanging off it, the entire thing would unravel. But still, it makes you feel comfortable if you just leave it the hell alone and never wash it.

Full disclosure: I’ve never seen the TV Show and only really half knew what it was about. I remember an Asian or Asian-adjacent guy yelling “Da plane!” and a lot of white outfits. And that’s where my memory ends. I even missed the ink joke until they literally spelled it out for me. So I had no source material to hold this accountable to, for better or worse.

The movie opens with five guests being flown to this island where they are told they may live out one fantasy, but only one, and they have to live it out to its natural conclusion. These are the movie’s only two rules. And they don’t even really follow them.

What is this island about? How does it do what it does? Are they high-tech robots, a la Westworld? Hallucinogens, a la Batman Begins? Real people, a la Surviving the Game? And how can they afford to do all this? It surely costs a lot of money to pull this off. Just stick those questions back in whatever pocket you pulled them from. Because that’s not what this movie is about, and the answer moves back and forth between all of them. Think Lost. If you were upset by the ending of Lost because you thought you deserved a rational explanation about how the island was able to travel in time, you probably won’t like this either.

And in the big reveal, when the stakes are at their highest, they confuse the heck out of you and hope that by the time the smoke clears, you’re just going to be fine with whatever set of steak knives they just sold you. Who’s a guest and who’s a hostage and what is the distinction? Whose fantasy was this? Maybe it isn’t theirs. Or maybe they’re living theirs, but inside someone else’s fantasy? The movie puts together an interesting puzzle that doesn’t all completely fit, but it’s still fun to put together the pieces you have. Kind of.

If Fantasy Island is trying to show us the dark side of wish fulfillment, it missed. If it’s trying to wrap a puzzle inside a puzzle, it’s somewhere on the target, probably in the blue circles. This is a movie I enjoyed and would tentatively recommend with a lot of disclaimers.

5/10

Dustin Fisher