When I purchased this movie from Amazon, I was under the impression that I was getting a zombie movie, especially because the DVD cover had a girl with dead eyes emerging from the water with her hands reaching out towards you, and more hands were emerging in the water behind her from other corpses. Plus it had this brandished underneath the title "the dead will rise with the tide".
Well, you have to look hard and far to find these zombies, because they just ain't there. In fact, there is not a single zombie to be found in the entire movie. The DVD cover is such a bad case of false advertising and luring people into purchasing under false pretenses.
The story, in all its lack-of-zombies-glory, is about a group of young people going out to party on a remote island, getting passage aboard a ship sailed by captain Jack who is somewhat of a shady character. Using the island for illegal operations, Jack and his partner has come into possession of some strange dust obtained from a native shaman during a fatal encounter. Giving the youngsters this dust under the guise of it being drugs, the youngsters find themselves hunted by a mysterious tribesman.
Right, well the story itself is adequate in originality, but the characters in the movie were one-sided, shallow and caricatures, which made the movie hard to appreciate. Plus, the lack of zombies was a down-right punch to the gut. This was a voodoo thriller at best, and I use the term thriller sarcastically here. Forget about the living dead, they just ain't there.
The people in the movie were actually doing good enough jobs with their given roles, but they were fighting an uphill battle with one-dimensional characters and not having the best of dialogue to work with.
I will say that the movie actually did have a good enough ending, and if you are truly observant while watching the movie, you will be given enough clues to actually figure it out. Otherwise, I assume that the ending will be somewhat of a surprise to most viewers. So thumbs up on this achievement at least.
If you like voodoo mysticism and such, then you might find some enjoyment in the movie, otherwise, there isn't much that "Island of the Dead" has to offer, except for false advertisement.
