The Island

This is a creepy little horror adventure from director Po-Chih Leong, where a teacher and his students run into a horrible nightmare after camping at an island off the coast of Hong Kong that is inhabited by a mysterious woman and her three, malevolent sons.

The film gains much momentum from start to finish and much of the suspense and horror takes place on the island. The amount of misfortune our protagonists run into may be disturbing to the viewers and their run-ins with the evil doers are pretty savage to look at. This really defines the horror element of this type of movie genre - all the creepiness, suspense and thrills all built up without the overload of gore.

The mystery and the awe of terror surrounding the family on the island and the amount of fear the teacher and students experience will send chills down your spine. However, while intriguing, the acting was a little sub-par and this movie could have use some humor and redeeming moments, instead of just pure horror and depressing stuff. However, hardcore horror movie fans should enjoy this movie.

Grade C+

John Shum leads an expedition to an supposedly deserted island only to find out that it's inhabited by a group of seriously demented characters,lead by Peter Chan Lung.This is a family that stays together,slays together and when the youngest one is refused in marriage to one of the young girls of the troupe they turn into savage maniacs.Obviously inspired by Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre","The Island" offers very few nasty surprises.The villains are quite outrageous,but the gore and violence is kept to minimum.In fact the majority of the film resembles cheerful HK comedy loaded with silly humour and it's not until the hour mark that the horror truly begins.Hong Kong filmmakers often seems very desperate to include laughs whenever they can and "The Island" is no exception.Check out "Flesh and the Bloody Terror" or "Corpse Mania",if you want truly grim early 80's HK horror.

A nasty little film that starts off relatively light-heartedly, only to render the impending violence all the more savage and effective when things start to go wrong for the small group of students that have chosen the wrong island to go camping on. This is a satisfying and surprisingly well-executed offering, avoiding some of the more obvious excesses of gore that an American version would include yet more than compensating by virtue of its dark, grim tone and the disturbingly realistic grimness of its villains-- definitely recommended for fans of above-average horror flicks, and worth hunting down.