Island Escape

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.

When the daughter of an ultra-rich CEO is taken hostage at an experimental research facility, on a remote island.

A ragtag team of blue collar mercenaries are compiled to get her back.

However...little do they suspect what they'll be up against...

...Zombies. It's zombies.

The whole thing is a low budget action-horror-sci-fi film, featuring some middle brow acting, decent practical effects, and- what seems like- a pretty straight forward storyline (at least at first).

However, it's mostly just a group of people running around the woods with guns.

With an incredibly bizarre sci-fi angle spun in.

Where "the island resets itself every 3 days".

Which apparently means that new versions of themselves will come to the island every three days...while everyone left on the island past the three day point will turn into zombies.

Meaning that they are effectively caught in a neverending timeloop, fighting against zombified versions of themselves.

So...they must escape the island within that three day window...or accept their zombie fate.

That is, if they aren't killed by the island's "self destruction sequence", which the company behind the research facility claims they have initiated.

It's all kind of weird.

And hard to follow.

As it doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense.

Especially when the bit about traveling back through time- and going through wormholes- comes into play.

It's hard not to get lost in the foray.

So all you can do is try to roll with it.

Even if you don't understand exactly what is going on.

Perhaps it's all just over my head.

But I don't think so.

The complexity of it all is certainly intriguing.

But, in reality, it's just a poorly thought out, and forcibly constructed, storyline.

Turning what seemed like a straight forward zombie island escape, into a confounding sci-fi conundrum.

3 out of 10 (for trying).

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.

Although some reviewers on here are complaining about the "convoluted" time warp story line, I really didn't have any trouble following it.

Sure at the beginning you're wondering what exactly is going on, however that's part of the intrigue of the movie. It pretty quickly becomes apparent how the time warp system works and what the perils are.

The acting is good overall, the characters are well written and sympathetic, and the practical effects are really good. The monsters in particular are quite scary and there were a couple good jump scares as well.

If you're a fan of mid budget horror movies, I would highly recommend it.

For those that enjoy low budget flicks this isn't the worst one. The story is decent, it's a sci fi horror action movie.

The movie goes along at a decent pace which is the only thing working for it, the budget went to the makeup department which is done quite good for the "monsters" and the rest probably for the main actors gym and protein powder as we do get a shirtless scene.

I'm giving it 5 stars because the camera work is okay and it's all well shot with good lighting which is something so many low budget movies fail at. Along with solid story elements and the fact it kept my attention enough for me to finish it.