Island Escape

A 60 pound woman is hired to lead a team of five mercenaries with unknown skills to rescue the daughter of some dude. The team lands on the island by helicopter and proceeds to wander around, finding corpses on the way to the two tents that constitute the "DNA research lab" doing cutting edge science without the benefit of electricity or heat or protection from the elements.

It soon becomes clear the corpses are themselves, which is hinted at when they find duplicates of their own personal items on the bodies. Eventually the entire plot is read to us by an actor reading from a journal. So much for show not tell. The plot is a unique mixture of zombie and sci fi. It's a clever idea and in more competent hands could have formed the basis of a blockbuster movie.

This isn't a blockbuster.

There is no one who is relatable as character or actor. This is partially because of the low standard of the acting, but most of the blame goes to the writer. The actors simply aren't given anything meaningful to say or do. Backstory and interesting questions are shut down by someone saying, in essence, "the writer can't think of an answer so shut up". The camera work does the lack of emoting by the actors no favors by being up close all the time. The background music constantly implies something important is happening when nothing could be further from the truth.

Five stars for the interesting plot.

Experiments, testing, cloning, and studies into things man was not meant to understand or change are always headquartered on little, out-of-the-way islands, then, someone has to go there, usually after something horrific has happened, to try and fix or retrieve things. That's what happens here as well, except that our heroes are mercenaries, hired to find the daughter of the man who hired them.

On this island, though, well, there are some things going on that they aren't told about at all, and, unfortunately, it's not going to go well for them when they do. Things in the woods are stalking them, there are strange discoveries in the woods of duplicate items the team members have on them already.

It plays a lot like a syfy channel/asylum lower-budget sci fi film, but is a lot bettter than it should be - certainly better than the "sharknado" films, in my opinion. Would recommend if you don't have too high expectations.

The storyline in this time warp story is so convoluted that it doubles and triples back on itself leading to an ending that is completely nonsense!

The characters are pretty good and flushed out to a good degree, so that you get comfortable with them and by mid movies your are sympathizing with their plight and rooting for them, but even the relationships get so intertwined with the storyline that a good deal of even that aspect becomes fuzzy.

The subplot of the romantic aspect of the story is really bad and since the female lead bears a striking resemblance to "Mr. Bean" the few romantic scenes are hilarious. The female lead is a disaster - too scrawny to be the rough and ready mercenary type and too boyish and homely to add to a romantic subplot!

The ending makes you scratch your head and say "what the hell" to yourself as the credits roll!!!

First the good part.

Bruce Wemple have written a really good story for a movie, with some dialogues and twists that show a promising future for him as a script writer.

Now the bad part.

Acting, clothes and equipment for a supposed elite special ops team - instead they looks rather as the weekend bbq buddies with a grill, some beer and 20 pounds of pork.

Top secret highly advanced research laboratory on an remote island, that dabble in DNA and similar things to make humanity resistant to viruses, in two small tents ???

You got to be kidding me !

Something must have gone wrong there. They must have a tight schedule filming and suddenly the building they wanted to film in suddenly said no for some reason, or something.

With a big budget and better actors, this could been a really good film - so i give it an extra star rating for that.

I love this cast, so even though the story line was kinda confusing, it was good. It's basically the same cast that I've seen in a couple other movies from this same guy. It's supposed to be just a fun movie that you're not supposed to think too much into. I like that this guy makes monster movies, I wish he'd do something with dogman next time. That's one that no one really has touched on yet, dogman are different from werewolves. Anyway I'm getting off track. This was fun to watch, if you are a monster movie fan. Def could've been way better with a few tweaks, it's frustrating when movies that start off good and then the story line just... kinda goes off the rails.